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IMPERIALISM 
AND NATIONALISM 


A STUDY OF 
CONFLICT IN THE NEAR EAST AND 
OF THE TERRITORIAL AND ECONOMIC 
EXPANSION OF THE UNITED STATES 


BY / 
/ 
KIRBY PAGE 


Author of ‘War; Its Causes, Consequences and Cure,” 
Co-author of “The Abolition of War,” Editor of 
“Christianity and Economic Problems.” 


NEW Gap YORK 


GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT, 1925, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 
—_— Cc — 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


FOREWORD 


Every person who desires to see war banished from the 
earth is under obligation to understand the real nature and 
actual consequences of imperialism and nationalism. To- 
gether they constitute an exceedingly grave danger to inter- 
national peace. The full flower of European imperialism is 
visible throughout the Near East. In this region may also 
be seen the fruits of unrestrained nationalism. An examina- 
tion of the record of events in Turkey and the Balkans 
during the past century reveals the fact that the inevitable 
harvest of greedy imperialism and excessive nationalism is 
suspicion, hatred, violence and bloodshed. 

In the following pages we have attempted to outline the 
most important historic events of the Near East. Some un- 
derstanding of the history of this region is essential if we 
are to reach intelligent decisions concerning the emergencies 
which are constantly arising to threaten the peace of the 
world. The whole situation is so complex and full of uncer- 
tainty, prejudice and passion that no writer can be sure that 
he is free from bias and error. 

The present writer does not claim to be an authority on 
Turkish and Balkan affairs. The very brief visit which he 
recently made to that region has been valuable chiefly as a 
means of intensifying his interest and of giving him certain 
very vivid impressions. He has, however, spent a considerable 
amount of time in familiarizing himself with a portion of the 
literature in this realm. 

It is highly important that citizens of the United States 
should recognize the elements of grave danger in American 
imperialism and nationalism. The territorial and economic 
expansion of the United States has taken place so gradually 
that its significance has not been recognized by most people. 
The dangers inherent in a continuation of certain of our 
foreign policies has likewise escaped attention. Even a super- 


1 The term Near East is an indefinite one and various writers do not agree as 
to its limits. In this discussion we are concerned primarily with Turkey proper 
and the Balkan nations which were formerly a part of the Turkish Empire—Rou- 
mat Jugo-Slavia, Bulgaria and Greece—with incidental references to Egypt and 

alestine, 


Vv 


ae FOREWORD 


ficial examination of the trend of events, however, makes it 
clear that in our contacts with other nations we are drifteng 
into a situation which is full of menace for world peace. 

In the last two chapters we have endeavored to record cer- 
tain facts concerning our expansion which need to be kept 
in mind as we attempt to evaluate the merits and defects of 
our present foreign policy. 

The purpose of this discussion is three-fold: to furnish a 
background for the interpretation of current events in the 
Near East; to call attention to the calamitous record of Euro- 
pean imperialism and nationalism; to present evidence of the 
dangerous trend of certain phases of the foreign policy of the 
United States. 

To list all the books to which the writer is indebted in 
preparation of this manuscript would require much more 
space than is available; his primary obligations are acknowl- 
edged in footnotes. He desires to express his hearty thanks 
to the following persons who have read the manuscript and 
offered many valuable suggestions: J. L. Barton, President 
of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mis- 
sions; Samuel Guy Inman, Committee on Cooperation in 
Latin America; Sherwood Eddy, National Council, Y. M. 
C. A.;S. M. Calvert, Federal Council of Churches; William 
Adams Brown, Union Theological Seminary; Harold A. 
Hatch; Ralph Harlow, formerly a missionary in Turkey. 
It is hardly necessary to say, however, that the writer alone 
is responsible for statements contained herein. 

KirBy Pace. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 
TPEMPERTALISMIIN THE NEAR ICAST en veer hele. ee, 
2 NATIONALISM IN THE NEAR East ... . 23 
SILVELIGIONVIN THE) NEAR: WAST es way i re Od, 


4 THE TERRITORIAL AND EcoNoMIC EXPAN- 
SION OF THE UNITED STATES ..... . 54 
5 WHat SHALL THE UNITED States Do 


ABOUT IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM? . 8] 


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Cuapter I 
IMPERIALISM IN THE NEAR EAST 


Imperialism is the policy or practice whereby a nation 
gains control of foreign territory and foreign peoples. This 
domination may be political or economic in its nature. For 
many centuries the primary effort of nations was to gain 
political control of additional territory. During the last half 
century, however, the effort to secure economic advantages 
in foreign lands has been the dominant phase of imperialism. 
The rapid progress of industrialism in Europe and America 
is primarily responsible for economic imperialism. Industrial 
nations are not self-sufficient. They require raw materials 
from other lands. They must export goods to customers out- 
side their own borders. They must find foreign fields for 
profitable investment of surplus capital. 

Imperialism, therefore, includes the following practices: 
political control of territory; political control of strategic 
waterways, straits and canals; spheres of influence, economic 
concessions of minerals and raw materials; economic control 
of railways and other means of transportation and communi- 
cation; supervision and protection of investments. Powerful 
armies and navies are necessary adjuncts to these policies 
and practices. Moreover, military alliances between groups 
of nations are inevitable under such circumstances. Thus 
imperialism and militarism are inseparable. 

During the past two hundred years vast areas of Asia, 
Africa and the islands of the sea have passed under the politi- 
cal and economic domination of European powers. This 
expansion has been a major cause of friction between the 
nations and has resulted’ in numerous wars. The Near East 
has been the scene of one of the most bitter phases of the 
struggle between the imperialistic powers of Europe for con- 
trol of the earth. The great natural resources of this area, 
combined with its strategic location in relation to the control 
of the trade routes to the Far East, have made it an exceed- 
ingly valuable prize. 

7 


8 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


The fact that Turkey, for several centuries ruler of most 
of this area, had been steadily declining in power and had 
come to be known as “the sick man of Europe,” furnished 
the Western nations with an opportunity which they were not 
slow to grasp. The Turks have always been excellent fighters 
but have usually proved to be poor administrators. Their 
record is filled with inefficiency, corruption and violence. 

The Turks, like many other conquering peoples, have 
always been more eager to collect taxes from the vanquished 
and to live on the labor of others than to administer justice 
and protect the rights of the oppressed. Concerning the situa- 
tion in Macedonia, where conditions were not greatly dif- 
ferent from those prevailing in other Turkish provinces, 
Professor J. A. R. Marriott of Oxford, an acknowledged 
authority in this realm, says: “There is, indeed, a painful 
monotony in the tale of Turkish misgovernment. Here, as 
elsewhere, the toiling peasantry were subject to a cross fire 
of exactions, and extortions, and persecutions. They suffered 
at the hands of the Moslems because they were Christians; 
they were exposed to the lawless depredations of the brig- 
ands, frequently of Albanian race, by whom the country was 
infested; they had to meet the demands, both regular and 
irregular, of Moslem beys and official tax-farmers; they 
could obtain no redress in the courts of law; life, property, 
honour were all at the mercy of the ruling creed.” 1 Pro- 
fessor Albert Bushnell Hart, of Harvard University, in a 
very extreme statement, refers to the Turks as “a barbarous 
people whose government is oppression, whose tax system is 
plunder, and whose idea of war is torture, fire and blood.” ? 

So long as the conquered peoples would acknowledge the 
sovereignty of the Sultan and pay taxes as assessed, the 
Turks were generally tolerant and allowed a considerable 
degree of autonomy and self-government. Conquered peoples 
were usually asked to become Mohammedans and were 
offered all the privileges of this status. If they refused, 
they were obliged to pay a special head-tax, and were allowed 
freely to practice their own religion. Those who refused to 
become Mohammedans or to pay the special taxes were 
put to the sword. There is general agreement that the Turks 
were usually tolerant of the religion of subject peoples. The 
government of Christians was entrusted to the heads of 
their own religion. The Christian patriarchs were given 
civil duties as well as religious functions. Herbert Adams 

1 The Eastern Question, p. 415. 2The Forum, Dec. 1924, p. 735. 


IMPERIALISM IN THE NEAR EAST 9 


Gibbons says the Turks “were the first nation in modern 
history to lay down the principle of religious freedom as the 
corner-stone in the building up of their nation.” + 

Clair Price says: “Non-Moslems have been given far 
more tolerant treatment under the Caliph than religious dis- 
senters had sometimes been given under Christian rule.” ? 
“In their wars of conquest,” says E. Alexander Powell, “the 
Moslems exhibited a degree of toleration which puts many 
Christian nations to shame.’ 

On the other hand, the Turks have always been quick to 
stamp out with the utmost ferocity and cruelty any attempt 
at rebellion. Their history, like the history of many other 
nations, is filled with the record of terrible atrocities. Fol- 
lowing the Morea uprising in 1821 the patriarch of the Greek 
Orthodox Church and the Archbishops of Adrianople, Salon- 
ica and Tirnovo were hanged. For three days their bodies 
hung outside the episcopal palace and were then cut down 
and thrown into the Bosporus. Many thousands of Chris- 
tians were slaughtered. 

In 1876 some Bulgarian Christians defied the Turkish offi- 
cials and put one hundred of them to death. The Turkish 
army retaliated by annihilating whole towns and villages. 
Not less than 12,000 Christians were massacred with extreme 
brutality. In the years 1894-1896 approximately 100,000 
Armenians were butchered by the Turks. In April, 1909, 
30,000 Christians perished at the hands of the Turks at 
Adana and other places in Asia Minor. During 1915 and 
1916 occurred the most terrible of all the massacres, when 
approximately a million Armenians were murdered or were 
deported and lost their lives as a result of hunger and ex- 
posure. In September, 1922, the city of Smyrna was de- 
stroyed, with an appalling loss of lives. 

The incompetency of the Turkish Administration and the 
repeated massacres of subject peoples gave the Western 
nations a welcome excuse for intervention and served as a 
cloak to hide their imperialistic designs. There is little evi- 
dence to show that the diplomatists of Europe were moti- 
vated by a genuine desire to render disinterested service to 
the oppressed peoples under the Turkish yoke. There is, how- 
ever, a vast mass of evidence to indicate that these diplomatists 
frequently used the weaknesses and cruelties of the Turkish 

1 Quoted in The Eastern Question, p. 77. 2 The Rebirth of Turkey, p. 27. 

% The Struggle for Power in Moslem Asia, p 


48. 
4¥For a full account of this tragedy see Feayin Hale Bierstadt, The Great 
Betrayal, Chapter II. 


10 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


Government as a means of arousing their own people and 
thus gaining support for their imperialistic ambitions in the 
Near East. Not one of the major powers of Europe has fol- 
lowed a consistent policy against Turkish misgovernment and 
cruelty. On occasions they have raised loud voices of protest 
against atrocities; but at other times, when it best served 
their own interests, they have remained silent or condoned 
these excesses. They have frequently incited minorities to 
rebellion and then left them to their fate. On numerous occa- 
sions various Western Powers have formed alliances with 
Turkey, and not infrequently they have fought with the 
Turks against other European nations. They have given little 
concrete evidence of a genuine desire to protect helpless 
minorities. On the other hand, in pursuit of imperialistic 
designs they have followed policies and engaged in practices 
which made inevitable the sacrifice of multitudes of helpless 
people. Let us examine this record more in detail. 

France was the first great Western Power to establish 
friendly relations with Turkey. Early in the sixteenth cen- 
tury Francis I entered into an alliance with Suleiman the 
Magnificent “and presently the Christian world was treated 
to the edifying spectacle of a Christian town, Nice, being 
sacked by the united French and Turkish forces.” + Among 
the ambassadors which Francis and his successors sent to 
the court of the Sultan were abbes and bishops. In 1583 the 
first English Ambassador was received at the Turkish Court. 
In 1587 Queen Elizabeth solicited the Sultan’s cooperation 
“against that idolater, the King of Spain, who, relying on 
the help of the Pope and all idolatrous princes, designs to 
crush the Queen of England, and then to turn his whole 
power to the destruction of the Sultan and make himself uni- 
versal monarch.” 2 

From the outset of his reign (1682-1725), Peter the 
Great of Russia was determined to gain access to the Black 
Sea. During this period France, deeply jealous of Russia’s 
influence in the Near East, openly sided with Turkey and ren- 
dered very able assistance. Indeed, it was to France that 
“the Ottoman Empire owed the new lease of life which it 
obtained in 1739.” During the reign of Catherine the Great, 
Austria, becoming alarmed at the rapid advance of Russia, 
signed a secret treaty with Turkey and agreed to march to 
the assistance of the Sultan if the Russians crossed the 
Danube. In 1787 Turkey declared war against Russia and 

1 Abbott, Turkey, Greece and the Great Powers, p. 17. 3 Tbid., p. 77. 


IMPERIALISM IN THE NEAR EAST 11 


Austria retaliated by a counter declaration of war against 
Turkey. Gustvaus III of Sweden entered the fray by march- 
ing against St. Petersburg. This Swedish intervention proved 
to be the deciding factor and probably saved the Ottoman 
Empire from immediate annihilation. 

Prior to this period England had not manifested any great 
jealousy toward the expansion of Russia. Indeed, she looked 
upon Russia as a possible ally against France. 1773 the 
elder. Pitt wrote: “I am quite a Russ; I trust the Ottoman 
will pull down the House of Bourbon in his fall.”” But about 
1790 British sentiment began to change and England soon 
became the most formidable barrier to Russian progress in 
the Near East. 

During the Napoleonic period occurred one of the most 
peculiar alignments in the whole history of Europe: Great 
Britain, Russia, Turkey, Prussia, Naples and Portugal, all 
against France. 

The effects of the French revolution are to be seen in all 
the councils of European statesmen throughout the half cen- 
tury which followed. Everywhere the existing authorities 
were afraid of revolt and constantly took counsel with each 
other as to ways of preventing such catastrophes. In 1821 
an insurrectionary movement in Moldavia, now a part of 
Roumania, unfurled the flag of Greek independence from 
Turkey. This was followed by a more serious uprising 
against the Turks in Morea, a peninsula of Southern Greece. 
Russia sought to take advantage of the situation by aggres- 
sive action against Turkey. The Austrian rulers, however, 
were desperately afraid of revolutionary movements and 
would not offer any support to the Greeks. France and 
Prussia were in no mood for further war, especially in aid 
of revolutionists. England was divided in sentiment. Lord 
Byron led a strong movement in favor of Greek independ- 
ence. The British Government, however, endeavored to 
maintain strict neutrality. Finally the Great Powers felt 
obliged to mediate. In the meantime the Turks fired upon 
British and French vessels in the Bay of Navarino. Without 
waiting for diplomatic advice from home, the French and 
British admirals ordered return fire and before night the 
entire Turco-Egyptian fleet had been destroyed. The news 
of this battle was received with consternation by the rulers 
of Europe. England was so determined to preserve the 
integrity of th Ottoman Empire that on January 29, 1828, 
the King felt impelled to “lament deeply that this conflict 


12 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


should have occurred with the naval forces of an ancient 
ally” and expressed “a confident hope that this untoward 
event will not be followed by further hostilities.” + 

In 1832 the Sultan found himself so seriously menaced 
by the approaching army of Ibrahim of Egypt that he 
appealed to the Great Powers. Czar Nicholas promptly 
offered his assistance to his traditional enemy. In February, 
1833, a powerful Russian squadron sailed into the Bosporus 
and anchored at Constantinople. This was followed by the 
appearance of a second and a third Russian squadron. Rus- 
sian engineers proceeded to strengthen the defences of the 
Bosporus and the Dardanelles. A treaty was entered into 
which “placed the Ottoman Empire under the military pro- 
tectorship of Russia.” England and France protested against 
the proposed violation of the neutrality of the straits. Met- 
ternich of Austria interposed with mediation and Russia 
agreed to refrain from enforcing the rights conferred by the 
treaty. In July, 1840, Russia, Prussia, Austria and Great 
Britain signed a treaty with the Sultan, in which, among 
other provisions, they agreed to defend Constantinople and 
to guarantee the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. 

Ever since the days of Peter the Great, Russia had set 
before herself two supreme objectives: the domination of 
the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, with the consequent con- 
trol of Constantinople; and the protection of the Christian 
minorities urider the sovereignty of the Sultan. The second 
of these objectives was constantly used as a means of advanc- 
ing the first. Napoleon had demanded and received certain 
rights on behalf of Latin monks in Turkey. France had been 
supported by other Roman Catholic countries. These con- 
cessions aroused bitter resentment in Russia. Czar Nicholas 
demanded their recession, and in March, 1853, sent Prince 
Menschikoff to obtain full satisfaction at Constantinople. 
He demanded from the Sultan a virtual acknowledgment 
of the Czar’s protectorate over all orthodox subjects of the 
Porte. This demand appeared to the British Government 
to be outrageous and inadvisable. The Czar was most eager 
to remain on friendly terms with England and in the spring 
of 1853 had a series of interviews with the British Am- 
bassador at St. Petersburg. During these interviews the Czar 
made the following comment: ‘Turkey is in a critical state. 
We have on our hands a sick man—a very sick man: it 
will be, I tell you frankly, a great misfortune if, one of 

1 Marriott, The Eastern Question, p. 221. 


IMPERIALISM IN THE NEAR EAST 13 


these days, he should slip away from us before all necessary 
arrangements were made.” Russia was willing to abandon 
temporarily the hope of occupying Constantinople. Serbia, 
Bulgaria and the principalities were to be independent states 
under Russian protection. England could have Egypt and 
Crete. But on one point the Czar was insistent: “I will 
never permit,” he said, “an attempt at the reconstruction of 
a Byzantine Empire, or such an extension of Greece as would 
render her a powerful State: still less will I permit the break- 
ing up of Turkey into little Republican asylums for the Kos- 
suths and Mazzinis and other revolutionists of Europe; 
rather than submit to any of these arrangements I would 
go to war, and as long as I have a man or a musket left 
would carry it on.”? England was aghast at these proposals 
and refused to be a party to any scheme looking toward 
the partition of Turkey. 

Although Menschikoff obtained concessions from the Sul- 
tan, the latter refused the outright protectorship of Christians 
claimed by Russia. In this refusal the Sultan was strongly 
supported by the British Ambassador. The entire staff of the 
Russian Embassy then left Constantinople. A large Russian 
army was mobilized in Bessarabia and in July occupied the 
principalities. The Czar was confident that Austria and 
Prussia would side with him. In this hope he was disap- 
pointed. The combined fleets of France and England were 
moved in defence of Turkey. Russia continued her effort 
to extort from the Sultan a right of protection over the 
Christians. She thought she could secure it by bluffing or 
by force. The other great powers intervened and the famous 
Crimean War began. In this conflict Great Britain and 
France were active allies of Turkey against Russia, while 
Austria and Prussia gave Turkey diplomatic assistance. The 
war lasted from March 27, 1854, to March 30, 1856, and 
resulted in terrible losses of life, enormous destruction and 
heavy financial costs. 

Historians are generally agreed that the Crimean War 
was one of the great blunders or crimes of history. Sir 
Robert Morier expressed the opinion of many when he 
described it as “the only perfectly useless modern war that 
has been waged.” Lord Salisbury later said that “England 
put her money on the wrong horse.” One significant result 
of the war was to give Turkey a new lease on life. Russia 
was publicly humiliated and checked in her advance upon 

1Ibid., pp. 257, 258. 


14 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


Constantinople. The successive efforts of Russia to gain 
Constantinople have been summarized in these words: “To 
reach her goal, Russia resorted to endless intrigue, formed 
diplomatic combinations galore, and waged nine wars.” } 

A new epoch in Near Eastern affairs began in 1889 when 
the German Emperor William II visited Constantinople. 
This visit was significant as evidence of the new concern 
of Germany with Near Eastern affairs. Germany was very 
late in achieving her unity and when she appeared on the 
scenes after 18/1 most of the valuable colonial prizes had 
already been seized. In 1886 a great German scholar wrote: 
“The East is the only territory in the world which has not 
passed under the control of one of the ambitious nations 
of the globe. Yet it offers the most magnificent field for 
colonization, and if Germany does not allow this opportu- 
nity to escape her, if she seizes this domain before the Cos- 
sacks lay hands upon it, she will secure the best share in the 
partition of the earth.” The Kaiser, therefore, turned his 
eyes to the Near East. This attitude was in marked contrast 
to the old policy of Bismarck, who once declared: “I never 
take the trouble even to open the mail bag from Constanti- 
nople. ... The whole of the Balkans is not worth the 
bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier.” 

At the time of the Kaiser’s visit, Abdul Hamid was Sultan 
of Turkey. Without doubt Abdul Hamid was one of the 
most cruel rulers who has ever reigned. He deliberately 
butchered many thousands of his Christian subjects. Yet 
the Kaiser was so eager to gain the support of Turkey that he 
said publicly while in Damacus: “May the Sultan and the 
three hundred million Mussulmans scattered over the earth 
be assured that the German Emperor will always be their 
friend, 

One of the fruits of the Kaiser’s visit was the granting 
of a concession of the port of Haidar-Pasha to the “German 
Company of Anatolian Railways.” This concession was ex- 
ceedingly significant because of its bearing upon the proposed 
Berlin-to-Bagdad railway. Around the question of the con- 
struction and control of this railway was waged one of the 
most bitter diplomatic battles of the century. It is difficult 
to exaggerate the serious effects of the strained relations 
between the Great Powers which resulted from this contro- 


1B. E. Schmitt, England and Germany, p. 255. 
*G. P. Gooch, History of Modern Europe, p. 262. 


IMPERIALISM IN THE NEAR EAST 15 


versy. Certainly it was one of the major causes of the 
World War. 

The region traversed by the Bagdad Railway is one of the 
most important in the world, because of the access it affords 
to vast stores of minerals, other raw materials, and agricul- 
tural products; and because of its strategic value from a 
political and military point of view. Therefore, all the major 
powers of Europe were vitally concerned over its control. 
Their economic backwardness and huge public debt pre- 
vented the Turks from building the railway themselves. 

As far back as 1872 an eminent German railway engineer 
by the name of Wilhelm von Pressel had been employed 
as one of the Sultan’s technical advisers and had helped to 
develop plans for railways in Turkey. On March 18, 1902, 
Abdul Hamid definitely awarded the Bagdad Railway Con- 
cession to a German company, the Anatolian Railway Com- 
pany. These concessions were to run for ninety-nine years. 
Commenting upon the significance of the proposal, Professor 
Earle says: “The Bagdad Railway, as thus projected, was 
one of the really great enterprises of an era of dazzling rail- 
way construction. Here was a transcontinental line stretching 
some twenty-five hundred miles from Constantinople, on the 
Bosporus, to Basra, on the Shatt-el-Arab—a project greater 
in magnitude than the Santa Fé line from Chicago to Los 
Angeles or the Union Pacific Railway from Omaha to San 
Francisco. It was a promise of the rejuvenation of three of 
the most important parts of the Ottoman Empire, eastern 
Anatolia, northern Syria, and Mesopotamia.” + 

From the beginning Russia sought to prevent Germany 
from obtaining this valuable concession. French sentiment 
was divided. The French patriots were opposed to the ad- 
vance of Germany, while French financiers with large invest- 
ments in Turkey thought the construction of the proposed 
railway would be a good thing. The French Government 
gave tacit cooperation and French money was invested in 
the German company. In the beginning Great Britain was 
favorable to the German proposals. Anything to block Rus- 
sia! Later, however, British sentiment changed. The increas- 
ing commercial rivalry between Germany and England made 
the British Government hesitate concerning the acceptance 
of Germany’s offer to make the Bagdad Railway an inter- 
national undertaking, financed and controlled by several 
powers. British shipping interests finally prevailed and 

1E,. M, Earle, Turkey, The Great Powers and the Bagdad Railway, p. 75. 


16 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


Balfour rejected the German offer. “As events turned out,” 
says Professor Earle, “the failure of the Balfour Govern- 
ment to effect the internationalization of the Bagdad Rail- 
way was a colossal blunder. If the proposed agreement of 
1903 had been consummated, the entente of 1904 between 
France and England would have taken control of the enter- 
prise out of the hands of the Germans, who would have pos- 
sessed, with their Turkish collaborators, only fourteen of the 
thirty votes in the Board of Directors.” * 

During the next ten years a furious diplomatic battle raged 
around this question. Throughout the whole controversy 
little concern was shown for the welfare of Turkey by the 
Western powers. They were not concerned about Turkey’s 
need of railways; they were entirely pre-occupied with their 
own interests in the undertaking. Lord Curzon once remarked 
that he “would not hesitate to indict as a traitor to his coun- 
try any British minister who would consent to a foreign 
Power establishing a station on the Persian Gulf.” ? 

In 1910 the Kaiser and the Czar reached an agreement 
on the following points: (1) Germany recognized the Rus- 
sian sphere of interest in Northern Persia; (2) Russia with- 
drew her objections to the German share in the Bagdad Rail- 
way; (3) Russia was free to obtain railway concessions in 
Persia. A Constantinople daily made the following pertinent 
comment concerning this agreement: “There is no mention 
of us” in this important treaty; “as if we had no connection 
with that line, and we were not masters of Bagdad and Basra 
and the ports of the Persian Gulf.” It later developed that 
the French and British foreign offices had given their con- 
sent before this agreement between Russia and Germany 
had been signed. During the next three years great progress 
was made in unravelling the diplomatic tangle around this 
problem. On February 15, 1914, France and Germany signed 
a secret agreement containing the following provisions: (1) 
Northern Anatolia was regarded as a sphere of French influ- 
ence; (2) Syria was also recognized as a French sphere of 
influence; (3) the regions traversed by the Anatolian and 
Bagdad Railways were defined as a German sphere of influ- 
ence. This agreement was signed not only by high officials 
of the two Governments but also by prominent financial con- 
cerns of both countries. “No longer are treaties negotiated 
by diplomatists alone, but by diplomatists and bankers!’ 
In 1913 an important Anglo-Turkish agreement was signed. 

1 Ibid., p. 188. 9 Ibid., p. 212. 8 Ibid., p. 249. 


IMPERIALISM IN THE NEAR EAST 17 


On June 15, 1914, only a few days before the outbreak of 
the World War, an Anglo-German agreement had been 
incorporated in a draft treaty and was ready for formal ratifi- 
cation when the storm broke. “On the eve of the Great 
War,” says Professor Earle, “the Bagdad Railway contro- 
versy had been all but settled.” + 

On October 31, 1914, Turkey entered the war on the side 
of Germany. On March 20, 1915, Russia and Great Britain 
signed a secret agreement in which Great Britain consented 
to the Russian annexation of Constantinople and the Straits ; 
and in return Russia agreed to maintain a benevolent atti- 
tude toward British claims elsewhere and to recognize the 
so-called neutral zone in Persia as within the British sphere 
of influence.? 

On April 26, 1915, Great Britain, France, Russia and Italy 
signed the secret Treaty of London. By the terms of this 
treaty Italy was to receive the Trentino, the Southern Tyrol, 
Trieste, the country of Gorizia and Gradisca, Istria, Northern 
Dalmatia, numerous islands, additions to her colonial terri- 
tory in Africa, and not least important, a prospective share 
in the partition of Asiatic Turkey.’ 

In the spring of 1916 Great Britain, France and Russia 
signed a secret agreement whereby Great Britain was to 
obtain Southern Mesopotamia, with Bagdad and two ports 
in Syria; France was to obtain Syria, the Adana vilayet 
and Western Kurdistan; Russia was to secure Trebizond, 
Erzerum, Bitlis, Van, and territory in Southern Kurdistan.* 

On April 26, 1916, France and Russia signed the secret 
Sazonov-Paléologue Treaty, by which Russia was awarded 
full control over the vilayets of Trebizond, Erzerum, Bitlis 
and Van—an area larger than the State of New York; and 
by which France was to receive adequate compensation in the 
region to the south and southwest of the Russian acquisitions.° 

On May 9, 1916, the famous Sykes-Picot Treaty was 
signed between Great Britain and France. France was to 
receive the Syrian coast from Tyre to Alexandretta, the prov- 
ince of Cilicia, and southern Armenia. In addition France 
was to have a zone of influence embracing the provinces of 

1 Ibid., p. 244. ; 

2F, Seymour Cocks, The Secret Treaties, p. 15. This book contains an excel- 
lent summary of the various secret treaties entered into by the Allies during the 
war. See also Ray Stannard Baker’s Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement, 
Vol. 1, pp. 23-81. 

8 Cocks, The Secret Treaties, p. 27. 


4Tbid., p. 43. : 
& Earle, Turkey, the Great Powers and the Bagdad Railway, p. 293. 


18 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


Aleppo, Damascus, Deir and Mosul. Great Britain was to 
obtain complete control over lower Mesopotamia from Tekrit 
to the Persian Gulf and from the Arabian border to the 
Persian frontier.? 

In April, 1917, the so-called St. Jean de Maurienne Agree- 
ment was reached between France, Great Britain and Italy, 
by which Italy was granted complete possession of almost 
the entire southern half of Anatolia—including the cities of 
Smyrna, Konia and Adalia, together with an extensive “zone 
of influence” northeast of Smyrna.’ 

“In the case of Turkey,” says Mr. Ray Stannard Baker, 
“the secret conversations did not stop with the entry of 
America into the war, they did not stop even after the 
acceptance of the Fourteen Points as the basis of peace 
with their provisions concerning open diplomacy and the 
agreement (in Point XII) regarding the disposal of Turkey. 
They were even continued secretly between Great Britain 
and France after the Peace Conference began to sit!’ 3 

As soon as the Allies were victorious in the war they set 
about the task of taking possession of the various spoils. 
Italian troops occupied Adalia and vicinity. French armies 
replaced the British forces in Syria and Cilicia. Great 
Britain began the conquest of Mesopotamia and Kurdistan. 
By the Treaty of Versailles, all German rights in the Bagdad 
Railway and other economic enterprises in the Near East 
were abrogated. The Treaty of Sevres, August 10, 1920, 
carried this process a step further and left hardly a trace of 
German influence in the Near East. Furthermore, this treaty 
gave the Allies a strangle-hold upon the economic life of 
Turkey. The Capitulations—special privileges and immuni- 
ties which foreigners in Turkey had long enjoyed—were re- 
established and extended. An Interallied Financial Commis- 
sion was added to the old Ottoman Public Debt Administra- 
tion and exercised financial control over the Turkish budget 
and had the right to veto any proposed concessions. “In con- 
trol of its domestic affairs the new Turkey was tied hand 
and foot. Here, indeed, was a Carthaginian peace! And 
all of this was done’’—according to the words of the Allied 
Tripartite Agreement of August 10, 1920—“in order ‘to 
help Turkey, to develop her resources, and to avoid the inter- 
national rivalries which have obstructed these objects in the 
past! Fd ” 


1Jbid., pp. 293, 294. 2 Thid., 295. 
8 Woodrow Wilson and the World Settlement, EL. Lp 362,63; 
* Earle, Turkey, the Great Powers and the Bagdad Railway, p. 303. 


IMPERIALISM IN THE NEAR EAST 19 


The ink was hardly dry upon the Treaty of Sevres before 
it began to be broken. The Turkish Nationalists never had 
any intention of observing it. They bitterly resented the 
Greek occupation of Smyrna in May, 1919. Under the lead- 
ership of Mustapha Kemal Pasha, a Grand National As- 
sembly was formed at Angora in April, 1920. Then fol- 
lowed a series of successful military campaigns. In the 
spring of 1921 separate treaties were signed with Russia, 
Italy and France, providing for the evacuation of certain 
Turkish territories, Then came the fatal blunder by the 
Greeks, the debacle of the Greek armies, the return of 
Smyrna and portions of Thrace to Turkey, the abolition of 
the Sultanate, the proclamation of the Turkish republic, and 
the entry of the Turkish army into Constantinople. 

The dramatic recovery of the Turks was due in large 
part to the paralysis of the Western Powers, caused by di- 
visions in their own ranks. Professor Arnold Toynbee has 
summarized the facts of the situation in the following words: 
“The first phase after the European War may be described 
somewhat as follows: France was backing Poland vigorously, 
and Hungary tentatively, against Germany and Russia; and 
she was backing Turkey tentatively against Russia and vig- 
orously against Greece because Greece had been backed by 
Great Britain. Great Britain was backing Greece against 
Turkey, because an aggrandised Greece dependent on British 
support would save Great Britain the trouble of herself im- 
posing her Eastern peace-terms. Italy was backing Turkey 
against Greece as payment on account for prospective eco- 
nomic concessions in Anatolia; and Russia was backing Tur- 
key against Greece to deter her from purchasing the backing 
of any of the Western Powers who were Russia’s enemies.” + 

The overturn of the Treaty of Sevres necessitated the 
calling of the first Lausanne Conference, on November 20, 
1922, Within a few hours, the old rivalry of the Western 
Powers for the dominant position in the Near East broke 
out again. The conference finally went on the rocks be- 
cause the Allies insisted upon economic, financial, and ju- 
dicial clauses which the Turks would not accept. Ismet 
Pasha, head of the Turkish delegation, said: “The treaty 
would strangle Turkey economically. I refuse to accept eco- 
nomic slavery for my country.” 

The second Lausanne Conference assembled on April ex 
1923. A month later it was announced that a syndicate of 

1 The Western Question in Greece and Turkey, p. 42. 


20 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


British banks had purchased from the Swiss holders of Ger- 
man securities a controlling interest in the Anatalian and 
Bagdad Railway Companies. Thus, after twenty years of 
diplomatic conflict, Britain secured the prize which she had 
so long coveted. 


SUMMARY 


There can be no doubt that the domination of the back- 
ward parts of the earth by the imperialistic nations of the 
West has borne much good fruit. In many places disease 
and pestilence have been greatly reduced, famine practically 
abolished, education extended and superstition uprooted, an- 
archy and violence replaced by orderly government and due 
process of law, with the consequent increase in security of 
life and property. Moreover, the opening up of vast stores 
of raw materials has added enormously to the comfort and 
wellbeing of multitudes of people in all lands. One en- 
thusiastic advocate says: “Imperialism is the greatest power 
in the world today, for it combines with the force and inspira- 
tion of national needs and ideals a code of international 
conduct, aiming at the spread of law and the maintenance 
of peace.” + 

On the other hand, imperialism has been a major cause of 
war and has left its trail of blood in many parts of the earth. 
This phase of the record of Western imperialism in the Near 
East has been summarized by Professor Earle in these words: 
“European governments were not content to interfere in 
the affairs of the Ottoman Empire. They sought to de- 
stroy it. Their zeal in this latter respect was limited only 
by their jealousies as to who should become the heir of the 
Sick Man. Russia encouraged the Balkan and Transcau- 
casian peoples to resist Turkish domination; France acquired 
control of Tunis and built up a sphere of interest in Syria; 
Great Britain occupied Egypt; Italy cast longing glances at 
Tripoli and finally seized it; Greece fomented insurrection 
in Crete. Germany and Austria-Hungary sought to bring 
all of Turkey into the economic and political orbit of Central 
Europe. The Powers rendered lip-service to the sovereignty 
and the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, but they 
never allowed their solemn professions to interfere with their 
imperial practices. At best Turkish sovereignty was a polite 
fiction—it was always a fiction, if not always polite.” ? 


1 Sir Edward Grigg, The Greatest Experiment in History, p. 171. 
2 Turkey, the Great Powers and the Bagdad Railway, pp. 11, 


IMPERIALISM IN THE NEAR EAST 21 


In the House of Commons, on March 18, 1914, Sir Mark 
Sykes said: “The Turkish Government, I know, have been 
accused of being corrupt. I venture to submit that it has 
not been for want of encouragement from Europeans that 
the Turks have been corrupt. The sinister—I think it is not 
going too far to use that word—effect of European financiers 
on Turkey has had more to do with the misgovernment than 
any Turk, young or old.” In this connection Mr. G. F. 
Abbott says: “The annals of European diplomacy in Turkey 
reek with bakshish. There is not one Western representative 
of any nationality or epoch who has not left on record his 
faith in this homeopathic treatment.” + 

Concerning the imperialistic struggle between the Great 
Powers, Mr. E. Alexander Powell says: “The story of that 
conflict forms a narrative of intrigue, trickery, selfishness, 
deceit, greed and hypocrisy, which has few parallels in his- 
tory. ... At the close of 1918 it seemed that the lessons 
taught by the Great War were so appalling that even the 
case-hardened diplomatists would give heed to them. Yet, 
before the soil has had time to settle on five million graves, 
the world once more finds itself caught up in the same mad 
merry-go-round of imperialism, intrigue, secret diplomacy, 
and all that follows in their train. Nothing is really changed. 
The old, bad methods which brought such disaster to the 
world have not been abandoned. The sleek diplomatists of 
Downing Street and the Quai d’Orsay and the Consulta are 
pursuing the same policies which obtained in the days of 
Talleyrand and Metternich, of Disraeli and Bismarck. They 
still cling tenaciously to the theory that it is the God-given 
right of the white man to impose his will on the black, the 
yellow and the brown; to achieve their ends they trade whole 
populations, heedless of their rights and desires, as callously 
as though they were so many herds of cattle; they are pre- 
pared, if need be, to send whole armies down to slaughter.” ? 

Professor Philip Marshall Brown, of Princeton Univer- 
sity, says: “The Powers. of Europe, in their pursuit of im- 
perialistic ends, had been blind to the needs and the rights of 
the peoples of the Near East. They had even stooped to use 
these peoples as pawns in the larger game of Balance of 
Power.” ? In 1920 Viscount Bryce said: “The Eastern 
Question has been for a century or more the standing diffi- 
culty of European diplomacy. It would have been settled 


1 Turkey, Greece and the Great Powers, p. 4. 
2The Struggle for Power in Moslem Asia, pp. 14, 15. 
* These Eventful Years, Vol. 2, pp. 148, 149. 


22 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


many years ago but for the jealousies of Russia, France, 
Britain, and latterly, of Germany also.” Professor Mears, 
of Leland Standford University, declares that “the diplomacy 
of the Great Powers should be held largely responsible for 
the present condition of the Armenians.” * After a recent 
visit to the Near East, Professor John Dewey of Columbia 
University said: “A deeper and fuller acquaintance with the 
sufferings of all these peoples brings with it a revulsion. One 
becomes disgusted with the whole affair of guilt. Pity for all 
populations, majority and minority alike, engulfs all other 
sentiments—except that of indignation against the foreign 
powers which have so unremittingly and so cruelly utilized 
the woes of their puppets for their own ends.” Such is the 
record of imperialism in the Near East. 


1 Quoted in Modern Turkey, edited by Eliot Grinnell Mears, p. 15, This is 
peobauly the er comprehensive and up-to-date book on Turkey now available. 
id., Pp. ; 
%The New Republic November 12, 1924, p. 268. 


CHapter 2 
NATIONALISM IN THE NEAR EAST 


Nationalism is a sentiment. It is subjective. It is not 
produced by any one cause. It has many sources. Some of 
the factors which produce nationalism are: race, language, 
geography, religion, culture, history and tradition, common 
economic interests. In some cases many of these elements 
are combined, while in other cases most of them are lack- 
ing. Russia is a nation composed of forty-eight races, the 
United States has many more. Switzerland has three offi- 
cial languages. Many Canadians of Quebec speak French, 
but the Basques and Bretons of France do not. Few na- 
tions possess natural geographical boundaries and most of 
them are composed of peoples with various religious beliefs. 
Only a few nations are bound together by a common culture; 
most of them contain highly educated persons and illiterates, 
rich and poor, urban and rural communities. Frequently 
farmers and workers have more in common with similar 
groups across the frontier than with consumers and em- 
ployers in their own cities. 

“Nationality,” says Israel Zangwill, “is a state of mind 
corresponding to a political fact.” In the words of Pro- 
fessor G. P. Gooch, “nationalism is the self-consciousness 
of a nation.” Professor Alfred E. Zimmern says: “Na- 
tionality, like religion, is subjective; psychological; a condi- 
tion of mind; a spiritual possession; a way of feeling, think- 
ing and living.” Still another definition has been given by 
Ramsay Muir: “A body of people who feel themselves to 
be naturally linked together by certain affinities which are 
so strong and real for them that they can live happily to- 
gether, are dissatisfied when disunited, and cannot tolerate 
subjection to peoples who do not share these ties.” 

In one sense nationalism is a very ancient sentiment; in 
another sense it is the creation of the nineteenth century. 
From one angle it is merely a development of the gre- 

23 


24 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


gariousness and “consciousness of kind” which led to the 
formation of the tribe and the early city-state. But as a 
consciously expressed doctrine, nationalism is very recent. 
“It may safely be said that before the period of the French 
Revolution no statesman, and no political thinker, had ever 
enunciated such a doctrine, or would have admitted its 
validity if it had been propounded to him.’1 An eminent 
historian has expressed the same idea in the words: “While 
patriotism is as old as human association and has gradually 
widened its sphere from the clan and the tribe to the city 
and the state, nationalism as an operative principle and 
an articulate creed only made its appearance among the more 
complicated intellectual processes of the modern world. The 
august conception of the unity of Christendom under the 
joint sway of Emperor and Pope was almost as unfavorable 
to national differentiation as had been the universalism of the 
Roman Empire; and though the latter centuries of the Mid- 
dle Ages witnessed the steady growth of national conscious- 
ness and the high-souled patriotism of Joan of Arc, it was 
not until the political and religious system of medieval 
Europe went down before the combined assaults of the 
Renaissance and the Reformation that the sovereign state 
emerged as the dominant type of political organization. In 
the fulness of time the doctrine of nationalism issued from 
the volcanic fires of the French Revolution, carrying its virile 
message of emancipation and defiance to the uttermost parts 
of the earth, and filling the Nineteenth Century with the 
insistent clamour of its demands.” ? Between 1820 and 1878 
seven new nations took shape in Europe: Germany, Italy, 
Belgium, Greece, Serbia, Roumania and Bulgaria. 

It will be noticed that four of these are Balkan nations. In 
no part of the world has the ferment of nationalism been 
more manifest in recent years than in the Near East. For 
many centuries the Turks dominated this whole region. In 
1683 the Turks for the second time failed in their siege of 
Vienna. At that period they were masters of the whole of 
Southeastern Europe, including parts of Austria, Hungary, 
Poland, Southern Russia, and the territory occupied by the 
modern nations of Roumania, Jugo-Slavia, Bulgaria, Albania 
and Greece. Turkish losses of territory since 1699 are shown 
in the following table: ? 


1 Ramsay Muir, Nationalism and Internationalisn 37 
2G. P. Gooch, Nationalism, p, 5 tine 


®W. S. Davis, A Short History of the Near East, p. 395. 


NATIONALISM IN THE NEAR EAST 25, 


Pangary ios. sa 1699 Lost to Austria. 

Crimea, South 

Russia, etc) sae sa. 1774 Virtual expulsion of Turks; 1784, annex- 
ation by Russia. 

PRVDUeee cay sere s 1808 Virtual autonomy under Mehemet Ali; 


1882, British occupation; 1914, repudia- 
tion of Turkish suzerainty, 1922, es- 
tablishment of “Kingdom of Egypt.” 


SIELDIATS Pec Soudus 1815 Partial autonomy; 1829, complete auton- 
omy; 1878, independence. 
Roumania ....... 1829 Turkish protectorate becomes nominal; 


1878, independence. (Bessarabia non- 
Turkish since 1812.) 

Oy oss PRP ee a en 1829 Independence; 1882, 1913, 1920, additional 
Turkish lands annexed. 

Caucasus Lands... 1829 and 1878, ceded in part to Russia. 


DUP Stie gars ne wad 1878 Weak protectorate; 1885, Eastern Rou- 
melia added; 1908 independence. 

Bosnine tsa eek t eel. 1878 Under Austrian control; 1908, annexed 
by Austria. 

POVAIS as a hwy hae § 1878  Ceded to Britain. 

PT PPO oa hice ota a 1912 Surrendered to Italy. 

Jats? Tole Sean tia 1913. Cut adrift from Turkey. 

INL ECRILON LAY. wc e leg 1913. Divided between Serbia, Greece and 
Bulgaria 

BLT ACen ee iuiits en ae 1913 Lost in part to Bulgaria (later to Greece) 

fEgean Islands 

aft CAEL cao ee 1913 Lost to Greece 

PATADLS bee i aces 1918 Seceded as “Kingdom of Arabia.” 

Palestine. 3.23. 65%. 1918 Occupied by Britain, for “Zionists.” 

Mesopotamia ..... 1918 Occupied by Britain and Arabian in- 
surgents 

Gallipoli Peninsula 1920 Occupied by Allied Western Powers 

PSVEIG WO yasmin ls ee 1920 Occupied by France. 


Leaving after the World War to the successors of Mohammed II, 
Selim the Grim, and Solyman the Magnificent the remaining pos- 


session of Anatolia, plus the city of Constantinople with Eastern 
Thrace. 


The revolutionary movements and the rise of nationalism 
were a major cause of Turkish atrocities during the last 
fifty years. “The primary motive,” says Professor Marriott, 
“which animated Abdul Hamid was beyond all question not 
fanaticism but fear. Greeks, Roumanians, Serbians, and 
Bulgarians; one after another they had asserted their in- 
dependence, and the Ottoman Empire was reduced to a 
mere shadow of its former self. That these events had 
caused unrest among the Armenians, even though Armenia 
was not like Roumania or Bulgaria, a geographical entity, 
it would be idle to deny. Abdul Hamid was terrified.” 4 

During the two Balkan Wars in 1912 and 1913, the various 


1The Eastern Question, p. 397. 


26 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


Balkan countries were guilty of many excesses. So outra- 
geous was the conduct of the different armies, Greece, Serbia 
and Roumania against Bulgaria that at the end of the second 
war the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace ap- 
pointed a special commission of distinguished neutrals to 
investigate the causes and conduct of the conflict. This 
commission issued a 413 page report,! from which the fol- 
lowing sentences are quoted: “‘Folk-songs, history and oral 
tradition in the Balkans uniformly speak of war as a process 
which includes rape, pillage, devastation and massacre. 
Populations were massacred en masse. Systematically 
and in cold blood, the Greeks burned one hundred and 
sixty Bulgarian villages and destroyed at least 16,000 
Bulgarian homes. A young woman at Haskova stated that 
she had seen the Greeks sprinkle her husband and some 
other men with petrol and then burn them. . . . Widespread 
and almost universal maltreatment of women and girls by 
the soldiers of the three nations has left behind moral con- 
sequences which cannot be estimated.” 2 Among the atroci- 
ties which were committed by some or all of the armies 
were: eyes were gouged out, ears and nose were cut off, 
bones were crushed, men were disemboweled, others were 
roasted to death. 

At the outbreak of the World War all the Balkan nations 
had achieved independence from Turkey, except for scattered 
populations in Eastern Thrace. Several millions of Balkan 
peoples, however, were still under the domination of Rus- 
sia, Austria and Hungary, notably in Bessarabia, Tran- 
sylvania, Bosnia, Croatia, and Slovenia. The World War 
resulted in drastic changes in national boundaries in the 
Near East. The size of Roumania was doubled by the addi- 
tion of Bessarabia, Transylvania, Bukovina and part of the 
Banat. Jugo-Slavia was formed by uniting Serbia, Monte- 
negro, Croatia, Slovenia, and part of the Banat. Greece 
was awarded Thrace. Bulgaria lost territory to Jugo- 
Slavia and to Greece. 

The war and the territorial changes have greatly inten- 
sified the sentiment of nationalism everywhere in the Bal- 
kans. There has been a marked revival of interest in the 
history, culture and language of the various nations. Patri- 
otism has never been more intense than in the post-war 
Sea Extreme emphasis upon nationalism usually leads 


Papert of the International Commission to Inquire Into the Causes and Con- 
Yee of the Balkan Wars. 
2 Ibid., pp. 106, 108, 151, 267. 


NATIONALISM IN THE NEAR EAST 27 


to governmental excesses. There have been conspicuous il- 
lustrations of this fact since the war. 

Roumania was not satisfied with her enormous gains from 
the war. In 1919 Roumanian troops invaded Hungary and 
for several months occupied Budapest. During their stay 
they did great damage and when they evacuated the city 
they carried with them grain, fodder, cattle, 1,151 locomo- 
tives, 40,950 railway carriages, all the post-office motor cars 
from Budapest, 4,000 telephone installations from the Buda- 
pest Central exchange, the telephones and typewriting ma- 
chines from the Government offices and schools, beds and 
bed linen from hotels and prisons, scientific apparatus from 
the schools, machinery from factories.? 

At various times from 1919 to 1921 Serbian (Jugo-Slav) 
troops invaded Albania, “taking possession of about one- 
sixth of that country’s area.” On April 29, 1921, the Al- 
banian Government addressed a protest to the League of 
Nations, in which it maintained that “140 villages had been 
destroyed and 6,603 houses burned, 238 Albanians had been 
butchered, 200 shot, and 300 burned alive, including some 
women and children; also that considerable property had 
been confiscated. More than 40,000 Albanians, it was stated, 
had been obliged to evacuate the devastated region.”? At 
the end of 1924 there was further trouble between Jugo- 
Slavia and Albania, and an appeal was made to the League 
of Nations by Albania. 

Greece was another victorious nation which has committed 
grave excesses since the Armistice. As the price for aban- 
doning neutrality and entering the war, the Allies had prom- 
ised Greece substantial territorial acquisitions in Asia 
Minor. Venizelos, the Greek leader during this period, had 
dreams of uniting all Greek-speaking peoples under one rule 
and of reviving the ancient glories of Greece. The Greek 
delegates at the Peace Conference made strenuous efforts to 
secure the annexation of Northern Epirus, Thrace, Smyrna 
and a large portion of the western littoral of Asia Minor 
and the Dodecanese islands. It will be recalled that at the 
Peace Conference, the Allies authorized Greece to occupy 
Smyrna, in Asia Minor, and that at the San Remo Con- 
ference in 1920 she was given a mandate in Smyrna and 
Eastern Thrace. The Greeks were not satisfied. While 
the Treaty of Sevres was being negotiated they launched an 


1 Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 31, 417. 
2 Frances Kellor, Security Against ee Vol. I, p. 184, 


28 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


offensive against Brusa. In August, 1921, they made an un- 
successful effort to reach Angora. In July, 1922, they trans- 
ferred 40,000 troops from Asia Minor to Thrace and de- 
manded of the Allied Powers permission to occupy Con- 
stantinople. Within a few weeks Turkish Nationalists under 
Mustapha Kemal Pasha attacked and utterly routed the 
Greek troops in Asia Minor. On September 9th Smyrna 
was burned, with an appalling loss of life. In November 
the Greek Government arrested and tried for high treason 
a number of their former officials, including three former 
Premiers, two former ministers and a General. On the 28th 
of the month they were found guilty and shot. 

During the period the Greek troops were in Asia Minor 
they were frequently guilty of atrocities. Professor Arnold 
J. Toynbee says: “Within a few hours of the landing, the 
troops committed a bad massacre in the city; within a few 
days they advanced into the interior; and a new and devas- 
tating war of aggression against Turkey began in her only 
unravaged provinces. During the early summer of 1921, I 
was for some weeks in intimate contact with Greek soldiers 
and civilians then engaged in atrocities upon Turkish peasants, 
and with the survivors of their victims whom the Ottoman 
Red Crescent was attempting to rescue. My strongest im- 
pression during this horrible experience was of something 
inhuman both in the bloodthirstiness of the hunters and in 
the terror of the hunted.” + 

The victorious Balkan nations were not only insatiable 
in their desire for additional territory, they were often guilty 
of oppressing the minority groups—that is, persons with a 
different language and culture—within their borders. The 
number and location of these minority groups under foreign 
control in Europe are indicated in the following table: 


Crer ination ya Pi dlc tye due COUR ace eran 7,594,000 
Maivars sy (Timotrisns ii). 2 eee ey es 2,803,000 
Bulparigne Oe S52 cts Lage onl dade eee «e- 1,339,000 
Ji olievS lin “ltaleit, us eeuoece ae 480,000 
Ruthenes (in Czecho-Slovakia) ......... 432,000 
Ruthenes (in East Galacia) ..2.......2. 3,700,000 
Ruthenes’)(in”’ Roumania) 9700352240... ,000 
Poles (in Czecho-Slovakia) .....%...... 167,000 


Total number of Racial Minorities in Europe 16,815,000? 


1A, J. Toynbee, The Western Question in Greece and Turkey, pp. 35, 262. 
2 See Noel Buxton and T. P. Conwil-Evans, Oppressed Peoples and the League 
of Nations, p. 82, 


NATIONALISM IN THE NEAR EAST 29 

The chief minority groups in the Balkan States are now 

Germans, Hungarians and Bulgarians. They are divided 
as follows: 1+ 


HUNGARIAN MINORITIES 


RECON ells aie cA aruba i Lene Hn Drag et tg 1,485,000 
MEARE SVE crocs uchilats emia cle den 1,200,000 
ROUTAN PYG Chee Sl gale cua aed 285,000 
RT IRE NUVI 21 sth aie 5's ws oplgei apie wlohe eral lata aeaee 829,000 
MER VAT HAM Te iets Uinta Rice Mane Nee aM 573,000 
CTeRTaS te RN ice ta tae aang te Ogg Whale 256,000 
ATEN COCTIR SOV ARIAL lore cole Liaw bac 4 occ alete ny geeeaued 1,030,000 
VE ROCGRT MME ar ye gi sht. Makin ais tncl sta cioeins § cleat 3,344,000 
Population.ot Hurigary (1921). 600. ioc cakecaee 7,840,000 
BULGARIAN MINORITIES 
DCE eCStEAR TInt eine eink wetted tints wet thei oni al 339,000 
RYU rT eCCOy GC LOTACE i.e Merial Glee ora kis clea e eee eat 300,000 
EIVRN MEAS Ia VAAG NPG lad Gin eig ute altar aa ala leg Mra hialhla ® aba 700,000 * 
1,339,000 
POMEAliomr OL DUISATIA TRIGEL is cell aoe sicle's's he 4,500,000 


Racial minorities in the various Balkan states have usually 
been subjected to great oppression. Since the Armistice this 
oppression has not ceased. Numerous illustrations are given 
by Noel Buxton and Conwil-Evans in their book “Oppressed 
Peoples and the League of Nations.” They say: “Those 
Macedonians who resisted the assimiliating methods of the 
Serbs were hunted down by the troops and shot at sight. 
Fugitives were offered a free pardon, if they gave them- 
selves up, but this declaration was hedged round with an 
alarming number of conditions and reservations. Failure 
to surrender oneself was visited upon the fugitive, his fam- 
ily and the village in which he lived; the ‘rebel’ would be 
pursued by the gendarmerie and killed, his family deported 
and the whole village evacuated should any attempt have 
been made to shelter or feed him. . . . The record of Greece 
is as bad as that of Serbia. The non-Greek populations of 
Greek Macedonia have suffered equally with those of 
Thrace. . . . Bulgarian schools, churches and other insti- 
tutions in Thrace were closed, and Bulgarian teachers, priests, 
doctors and lawyers expelled. A system of arbitrary arrest 
prevailed, and severe penalties were imposed often for 

1]bid., pp. 80, 81. 


30 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


charges that were false and fantastic. Bulgarians were 
forcibly conscripted into the Greek army and sent to the 
Asia Minor front.” } 

The Magyar minorities in Transylvania have likewise been 
oppressed and subjected to grave injustices by the Rouman- 
ians. “My experience of the working of the Agrarian re- 
form,” says a writer in a recent issue of the Fortnightly Re- 
view, “has amply confirmed the view that the Roumanians, 
in order to expropriate Hungarian landlords and force them 
to evacuate the country, are openly disregarding every clause 
of the Peace Treaty that is calculated to protect minority 
interests.” ? The persecution and massacres of Armenians 
and Greeks by the Turks is too well known to require elab- 
oration at this point. ‘“‘As regards minorities,” says Pro- 
fessor Toynbee, “it is notorious that in the Near East (if 
not all the world over) they invariably need protection 
against the dominant nationality in the state to which they 
belong.” 3 

It was this reason that the Treaty of Lausanne arranged 
for the compulsory exchange of populations between Greeks 
and Turks. Since January 1, 1924, more than 400,000 Mos- 
lems have been torn from their homes in Macedonia and 
shipped to Anatolia; while during this period more than 
100,000 Greeks have been moved from Asia Minor to Greece. 
Previously several hundred thousand Armenians and Greeks 
had fled from their homes in Turkey. During the two Bal- 
kan wars “more than 500,000 Turks were driven pell-mell 
from their Macedonian and Thracian homes in terror of the 
victorious armies of the Balkan allies.” This compulsory 
migration has caused incalculable suffering and misery. The 
magnitude of the problem has almost overwhelmed both 
Greece and Turkey. The Near East relief has rendered 
heroic and effective service to the refugees, but the re- 
sources available have been pitifully inadequate to meet the 
appalling conditions which have prevailed. “That so cruel 
and perilous an experiment,” says Professor Earle, “must 
be undertaken in the twentieth century is more than a vivid 
illustration of religious bigotry and callous indifference to 
human happiness. It is a challenge to our whole system 
of statecraft, built upon the vicious principle of unimpaired 
national sovereignty. It should compel attention to the ques- 


1 pp. 89-91. 
2 Francis Maxwell, Fortnightly Review, July, 1924, p. 113. 
3 Foreign Affairs, Sept. 15, 1923, p. 91. 


NATIONALISM IN THE NEAR EAST 31 


tion whether man was created for nationality or nationality 
for man.” 


TURKISH NATIONALISM 


Nationalism of an extreme variety is to be found at the 
present time in Turkey. The Young Turks’ movement dur- 
ing the first decade of this century greatly stimulated patri- 
otic sentiment. This movement was launched by a group 
of politicians and patriots, most of whom had studied in the 
university of Western Europe. It had as its objective the 
securing of parliamentary government and the transforma- 
tion of Turkey into a modern progressive state. In 1908 
they gained sufficient strength to compel the Sultan to re- 
store the Constitution of 1876 and to inaugurate parliament- 
ary government. In 1909 Abdul Hamid was deposed. ‘The 
patriotic efforts of the young Turks to “Ottomanize” their 
country led them to suppress free speech, to standardize 
education, and to repress anti-Ottoman agitation. Their 
severity was one cause of the First Balkan War in 1912. 

While the Young Turks’ movement stimulated devotion to 
country, the present nationalistic movement is due primarily 
to the excesses of the Allied Powers after the Armistice. 
The weakness of the Constantinople Government compelled 
the acceptance of the harsh terms of the Treaty of Sevres. 
But by this time the Government at Constantinople did not 
represent Turkey and had very little power. Real power was 
then in the hands of Mustapha Kemal Pasha and the Na- 
tionalist Party. Kemal was an army officer who had taken 
part in the revolution of 1909 which overthrew the Sultan. 
During the World War he commanded a division at Gallipoli 
and became a national hero. After the Armistice he was 
one of the leaders of the Nationalist movement. The occu- 
pation of Smyrna by the Greeks in May, 1919, had an elec- 
tric effect upon the Turkish people. Everywhere they were 
aroused to fury and began flocking to Kemal’s banner. The 
situation was intensified when the Constantinople Govern- 
ment declared Kemal to be an outlaw and sent a body of 
troops to arrest him. These troops deserted to Kemal. In 
September, 1919, the Nationalists elected a standing council 
of twelve members to sit continuously at Angora, an interior 
town. On October 5th the Sultan called a general election. 

1 Asia Magazine, January 1925, p, 49. 


32 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


The result was an overwhelming victory for the Nationalists. 
On January 28, 1920, the Parliament adopted “The Turkish 
National Pact.” On April 11th the British authorities in 
Constantinople suppressed the Turkish Parliament, arresting 
and deporting to Malta some forty deputies and a hundred 
other persons known to be in sympathy with the Nationalist 
movement. On April 23, 1920, a new parliament, under the 
title of the Grand National Assembly opened the first session 
at Angora, with Mustapha Kemal as President. On June 
17th it adopted a Constitution. So powerful did this move- 
ment become that the Treaty of Sevres was scrapped. The 
first Lausanne Conference broke up because the Turks were 
strong enough to resist the divided Allies. The second 
Lausanne Conference resulted in an overwhelming victory 
for the Turks. To understand the full significance of the 
Turkish triumph it is necessary to examine three documents: 
The Treaty of Sevres, The National Pact and the Treaty 
of Lausanne. 

The Treaty of Sevres was signed by the Constantinople 
Government on August 10, 1920. Its chief provisions are 
as follows: The Sultan retains Constantinople but with dis- 
tinct limitation of sovereignty; the Straits are neutralized 
and demilitarized; Greece is given a protectorate of Smyrna 
and Hinterland; Greece also receives Thrace and five 
islands; Armenia, Syria, Mesopotamia and Palestine and the 
Hejaz are declared to be independent states; Italy receives 
Rhodes and several other islands; the British protectorate 
over Egypt and the British annexation of Cypress are con- 
firmed; the size of the Turkish army is limited to 50,000 
men; the Capitulations are re-established. 

In striking contrast to this treaty, is the National Pact or 
Declaration of Independence of the Angora Government. 
The pact contains six articles, the most important of which 
reads: “Our highest and most vital principle is to have en- 
tire independence, with which, as in the case of all other 
countries, we shall be able to develop ourselves both socially 
and economically. We are opposed to all restrictions which 
are but obstacles to our political, judicial, and economic 
development. The terms of the payment of our debts, 
which will certainly be settled, must not be contrary to the 
spirit of this principle.” 1 

On July 24, 1923, the Treaty of Lausanne was signed and 

1 Herbert Adams Gibbons, Europe Since 1918, p. 448. 


NATIONALISM IN THE NEAR EAST 33 


has since been ratified by the Powers concerned.! This treaty 
represents a great triumph for the Turks and includes prac- 
tically all the demands contained in the National Pact. Con- 
stantinople goes back to Turkey and all foreign troops are 
to be withdrawn. The Turkish boundary in Europe is re- 
stored to that existing in 1914, with a few minor changes. 
Turkey renounces all rights to Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, 
Arabia, Palestine and a number of islands. The Bosporus 
and Dardanelles are to remain open to warships and mer- 
chant ships of all nations. A demilitarized zone is es- 
tablished on either side of the straits and in Thrace. No 
provision is made for an independent Armenia. Greeks 
in Turkey, outside of Constantinople, and Turks in Greece 
are to be exchanged. The Capitulations are entirely demol- 
ished. This means that foreigners in Turkey no longer 
have a privileged status but must now live under Turkish 
laws and be subject to Turkish courts. Foreign legal ad- 
visers are to be appointed, but they are to have only ad- 
visory powers. The treaty recognizes Turkey as a sover- 
eign nation, and as such is entitled to equality of treatment 
from other nations. The present Government is decidedly 
nationalistic and anti-foreign. It is determined that Turkey 
shall be free from all outside interference—political, eco- 
nomic, educational, religious. 

Whether or not the Nationalists will succeed with their 
program cannot be foretold. They are certainly confronted 
with gigantic obstacles. It remains to be seen whether or 
not the Turks can successfully manage their own economic 
and financial affairs. Hitherto they have confined them- 
selves primarily to such professions as the army, civil serv- 
ice, law, medicine, and agriculture, and for the most part 
have left trade, banking and industry to the Greeks and 
Armenians. The Turks have the reputation of being poor 
business men and inefficient administrators. Certainly they 
are, on the whole, lacking in experience in these realms. Not 
only are they now attempting to get along without the help 
of the millions of Greeks and Armenians who have been 
killed or transported, they are likewise driving out Amer- 
ican and European business men, by drastic tariff regulations, 


1 See the New York Times Current History Magazine, October, 1923, for the 
complete text of the Lausanne Treaty. The Turco-American Treaty, which is 
now before the United States Senate, should not be confused with the Lausanne 
Treaty, although its contents are very similar, During his recent visit to Con- 
stantinople the writer did not find a single person—missionary, business man or 
official—who believed that we should refuse to ratify this treaty. For the text of 
the Turco-American Treaty see Edgar W. Turlington, The American Treaty of 
Lausanne, published by the World Peace Foundation, 40 Mt. Vernon St., Boston. 


34 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


frequent interference by petty officials, heavy taxation and 
the frequent failure to administer justice in the Turkish 
courts, which are now the only courts available. Foreign 
trade is now at a very low ebb and practically no foreign 
capital is being invested in Turkey. The economic and 
financial crisis, after twelve years of continuous war, would 
have been serious in any case. It has been greatly ag- 
gravated and intensified by extreme nationalism. 

Moreover, the Government must contend with the an- 
cient tradition and practice of corruption in office. For many 
centuries most Turkish officials have lived by graft and 
dishonesty. The present Government undoubtedly contains 
at least a few men of proved integrity and devotion, but the 
number of such men is wholly inadequate. The rank and 
file of Turkish people are ignorant peasants, utterly lacking 
in experience with democratic government. Long experience 
has demonstrated that popular government requires a foun- 
dation of moral character if it is to endure. Turkey sadly 
needs a greater number of men of high character. The 
fact that the Koran sanctions plurality of marriage and 
allows concubinage, has tended to degrade womanhood, and 
to spread immorality. Sexual vice is widespread and is 
doing its deadly work. The physical consequences alone are 
tragic.1 The effects upon character are even worse. Truly 
the obstacles confronting the Government are stupendous. 

There are, however, several favorable factors in the pres- 
ent situation. The most important of these is the will to 
succeed which is everywhere being manifested. The Turks 
are determined to run their own affairs and are putting forth 
unusual efforts toward this end. The fact that the Govern- 
ment, by the abolition of the Caliphate, has abandoned the 
policy of Pan-Islamism and imperialism, makes it possible to 
concentrate upon domestic affairs. Then, too, the present 
population is more homeogeneous, as a result of massacres 
and deportations. Many of the causes of friction have thus 
been eliminated. Not the least important factor is the changed 
status of Turkish women. During the last two decades 
there have been profound changes in the position and out- 
look of women in Turkey. They are rapidly assuming po- 


1 “Tn one generation the Moslem population of Anatolia has declined by no less 
than 30 per cent, a truly appalling figure. The reason for this grave state of 
affairs is connected, not so much with combat warfare, but with the frightful 
inroads made upon the national physique by venereal diseases, the propagation of 
which was enormously intensified by the application of conscription . . . The 
provinces of Castamouni, Sivas, and Konia are especially affected by the venereal 
scourge, and in certain districts the entire population, male and female, adult and 
juvenile, is infected.” (Fortnightly Review, March 1, 1924, p. 457.) 


NATIONALISM IN THE NEAR EAST 35 


sitions of influence in public life. There is the further fa- 
vorable fact that the peoples of Western Europe have had 
enough of war for the present and probably will not in the 
near future tolerate further armed conflicts by their Gov- 
ernments in pursuit of imperialistic designs. Thus Turkey 
probably has gained a breathing-spell in which to set her 
house in order. What she will do with this opportunity re- 
mains to be seen.} 


SUMMARY 


Thus we see that everywhere in the Near East nationalism 
is one of the most powerful factors with which we must 
reckon. It is exceedingly difficult to draw up an accurate 
balance sheet which will show credit and debit side of na- 
tionalism. It has certainly been a chief means of arousing 
a patriotic devotion in the various nations and has led to 
political liberty, not only for the Balkan states but for the 
peoples of Turkey as well. “The instinct of Nationality,” 
says Professor J. Holland Rose, “has endowed the European 
peoples and Japan (perhaps soon we shall add China) with 
a vitality and force which resembles, say, the incoming of 
steam-power into industry. What previously had been mi- 
nutely sub-divided and inert became united, vigorous, aggres- 
sive.” * In one of the publications of the Carnegie Endow- 
ment for International Peace we find these words: “Wher- 
ever and whenever in the Balkans national feeling became 
conscious, then, and to that extent, does civilization begin.’ 3 

On the other hand, the evil fruits of nationalism are every- 
where manifest. In the name of patriotism acts of ag- 
gression have been justified, other peoples oppressed, sus- 
picion and hatred engendered, artificial economic barriers 
created and wars waged. Professor H. Morse Stephens, in 
his Presidential address before the American Historical As- 
sociation, says: “Just as a fervent belief in Christianity, 
based upon history and dogmatic theology, led to a belief in 
the righteousness of slaying Mohammedans in the period of 
the Crusades; just as a fervent belief in Catholicism or 
Lutheranism or Calvinism, based upon history and dogmatic 
theology, was held to justify religious persecution and the 
religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in 

1 For favorable accounts of Turkish nationalism see E. Alexander Powell, The 
Struggle for Power in Moslem Asia; and Clair Price, The Rebirth of Turkey. 


? Nationality in Modern History, p. 155. 
8 Nationalism and War in the Near East, p. 31. 


36 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


Europe; just as a fervent belief in different political theories 
led, in part at least, to the civil wars in England in the 
seventeenth century and in the United States of America 
in the nineteenth century; so a fervent belief in the doctrine 
of nationality has led to enmity between nations in the nine- 
teeth century. . . . National patriotism became the national 
creed. It filtered through the entire educational system of 
modern states. . . . Hymns of hate are the inevitable out- 
come of national patriotism based upon national histories. 
Family blood-feuds, the vendettas of the Corsicans and the 
Kentucky mountaineers, are considered proofs of a backward 
civilization, but national hatreds are encouraged as manifes- 
tations of national patriotism. ... The historian is in- 
fluenced by the prevailing spirit of his age, and he feeds the 
spirit of national intolerance today as his predecessors fed 
the flames of religious intolerance in days gone by. Woe 
unto us! if we cannot see, written in blood, in the dying 
civilization of Europe, the dreadful result of exaggerated 
nationalism as set forth in the patriotic histories of some 
of the most eloquent historians of the nineteenth century.” + 


1 American Historical Review, Vol. 21 pp, 227, 228, 236. 


Craptrer 3 
RELIGION IN THE NEAR EAST 


Imperialism and nationalism in the Near East cannot pos- 
sibly be fully understood apart from a knowledge of the 
main outlines of the religions of that region. The rigid 
separation between church and state, concerning which we 
Americans have such strong convictions, was not to be 
found in the Near East until very recently, and even now 
it is far from being the general practice. Throughout the 
centuries religion and politics have been closely interwoven. 

Since Christianity is far older than Islam, we shall begin 
with a short historic account of the rise and development 
of the Christian Church in the Near East. The conver- 
sion of the Roman Emperor Constantine in 312 marked the 
beginning of a new epoch for Christianity. Hitherto the 
Christians had frequently been cruelly persecuted and many 
thousands had been sent to martyrs’ graves. Now Chris- 
tianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the 
capital of which had been transferred to Constantinople. 
The conduct of Constantine following his conversion was 
such as to cast doubts upon the reality and permanence of his 
religious experience. The historian Gibbon says he degen- 
erated into “a cruel and dissolute monarch, corrupted by his 
fortune.” In 326, because of jealousy or fear, he condemned 
his eldest son, Crispus, to death, “either by the hand of the 
executioner or by the more gentle operation of poison.” 
Shortly thereafter Constantine accused his wife Fausta, to 
whom he had been married for twenty years, of unfaith- 
fulness and had her “suffocated by the steam of a bath, which, 
for that purpose, had been. heated to an extraordinary de- 
gree.” 1 Professor Adeney describes the four stages of 
Constantine’s attitude toward the church as “sympathy, jus- 
tice, patronage, and control.”* In a very short time the 
Church became subservient to the State and remained so for 
many centuries. ‘The Eastern Church, from the days of 


1 Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 2, p. 142. 
2 Walter F. Adeney, The Greek and Eastern Churches, p. 35. 


37 


38 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


Constantine onwards, lived under the shadow of an imperial 
palace. That we may take to be an epitome of its history.” + 
This fact is emphasized by another prominent historian, 
W. M. Ramsay: “The Orthodox Church in the East cast 
in its lot with the Roman Empire. It did not long attempt 
to stand on a higher level than the State and the people. 
It has not been an educating and elevating and purifying 
power. It has been content, on the whole, in spite of some 
notable and honourable exceptions, to accept the world as it 
was, and it has been too easily satisfied with mere allegiance 
and apparent loyalty to the State among all its adherents. 
It was the faithful ally of the emperors. . . . We see then, 
what a power among men the Orthodox Church has been 
and still is—not a lovable power, not a beneficent power, 
but stern, unchanging, not exactly hostile to, but certainly 
careless of, literature and art and civilization, sufficient 
in itself, self-contained and self-centered.” 

Within a very short time the Church was rent and torn 
by bitter theological controversies. Concerning the Chris- 
tians of the fourth and fifth centuries Gibbon says: “The 
principle of discord was alive in their bosom, and they were 
more solicitous to explore the nature, than to practice the 
laws, of their founder.” Their conflicts soon reached a 
degree of bitterness which seems incredible to modern peo- 
ple. Concerning the Monophysite controversy, Professor 
Adeney says: “Here was a fine point of theology, so diffi- 
cult to determine that only an expert could state it correctly, 
and yet it divided cities into furious factions with howling 
mobs and fatal riots.” ? In 380, eighty men who had come 
as a deputation to a council at Constantinople were sent out 
to sea and there burned to death. At Alexandria the Arians 
stirred up a mob which invaded the Church of St. Thomas; 
“a young man in woman’s clothing danced on the altar, an- 
other young man sat naked in the bishop’s chair, from which 
he openly preached immorality to a crowd that roared with 
laughter at what they took to be a fine joke; virgins of the 
Church were stripped, scourged, violated. In fact, the recent 
Bulgarian and Armenian horrors were anticipated by the 
Alexandrian atrocities committed in the name of Christian 
theology.” 4 

The Emperor Constantinus issued an edict to the effect 
that those persons who refused to take communion from the 


1Jbid., p. 31, 2 Luke the Physician, pp. 145, 149. 
% Adeney, p. 104. 4Ibid., p. 67. 


RELIGION IN THE NEAR EAST 39 


hands of Arian bishops should have their mouths “held 
open by a wooden engine while the consecrated bread was 
forced down their throat; the breasts of tender virgins were 
either burnt with red-hot egg-shells, or inhumanly compressed 
between sharp and heavy boards.” + In 390 by an edict of 
Theodosius pagan worship was forbidden and the act of 
sacrificing animals before an inanimate idol was pronounced 
high treason and was punishable by death.? 

A General Council of the Church was called in 449 te 
settle the Nestorian controversy. This Council was ac- 
companied by most disgraceful scenes. “If any one ven- 
tured to open his mouth in favour of ‘two natures,’ he 
was immediately shouted down with cries of ‘Nestorian!’ 
‘Tear him asunder!’ ‘Burn him alive!’ ‘As he divides, so 
let him be divided!’ ‘Drive out, burn, tear, cut asunder, 
massacre all who hold two natures!’”* At the instigation 
of Cyril of Alexandria, an extraordinarily talented young 
woman, Hypatia, was accused of heresy and “in the holy 
season of Lent, torn from her chariot, stripped naked, 
dragged to the church, and inhumanly butchered by the 
hands of Peter the reader and a troop of savage and merci- 
less fanatics: her flesh was scraped from her bones with 
sharp oyster-shells, and her quivering limbs were delivered 
to the flames.” * In 449 the Patriarch of Alexandria, so 
sorely “reviled, and buffetted, and kicked, and trampled” 
his brother Patriarch of Constantinople that the latter died of 
his wounds.® In 530 as a result of theological controver- 
sies, “respectable citizens, noble matrons, and consecrated 
virgins were stripped naked and raised in the air by pul- 
leys, with a weight suspended at their feet. In this painful 
attitude their naked bodies were torn with scourges, or burnt 
with red-hot plates of iron. The amputation of the ears, 
the nose, the tongue, and the right hand was afflicted by the 
Arians.” ® The historian Ammianus was of the opinion that 
“the enmity of the Christians towards each other surpassed 
the fury of savage beasts against man.” 7 

The Church, which had started as a simple brotherhood 
of believers, gradually took shape as a formal organization, 
and by the fourth century had developed an elaborate 
hierarchy. The worship of images and relics was firmly 
established by the end of the sixth century. This tendency 


1 Gibbon, Vol. 2, p. 315. 3 Tbid., Vol., 3, p. 135. 3 Adeney, p. 98. 
4 Gibbon, Vol. 5, p. 15. 5 Ibid., Vol. 5, p. 27. 
8 Tbid., Vol. 4, p. 31. 7 Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 319. 


40 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


was accompanied by an increasing elaboration of rites and 
ceremonies. 

Moreover, by this time the volume of immorality was so 
great that Chrysostom publicly condemned from the pulpit 
“the domestic females of the Clergy of Constantinople, who, 
under the name of servants or sisters, afforded a perpetual 
occasion either of sin or of scandal.” 1 In speaking of the 
Patriarch of Alexandria in 451, Gibbon says that witnesses 
proved that “the alms of the Church were lavished on the 
female dancers, that his palace and even his bath was open 
to the prostitutes of Alexandria, and that the famous Pan- 
sophia, or Irene, was publicly entertained as the concubine 
of the patriarch.” 2 

In the fourth century the monastic movement, as a means 
of escape from worldly corruption, arose in the East, a 
century earlier than in the West. It soon took a very ex- 
treme form. Large numbers of men and women fled from 
the cities, living in solitude in huts, in caves or in the desert; 
castigating themselves with an amazing extravagance of self- 
torture. Hilarion of Syria lived for forty-eight years on a 
dreary sand beach near Gaza.? Simon the Stylite lived for a 
summer buried up to his neck in a garden; then in a dark 
cave with a spiked girdle round his waist; then he built a 
pillar forty cubits above the earth and upon a railed plat- 
form he lived for thirty years!* ‘Macarius punished him- 
self for killing a gnat in a moment of irritation by retiring 
to the Scetic marshes, and there spending six months in 
a state of nudity among the insects, till on his return he 
was only recognized by his voice, his skin being like an ele- 
phant’s hide.” ® Pior, an Egyptian monk, allowed his sister 
to see him, but he kept his eyes closed throughout the visit.® 
This combination of corruption and extreme asceticism de- 
stroyed the vitality of the Church, although in every age there 
were notable examples of great piety, sacrificial devotion, and 
profound learning within her ranks. 


THE RISE OF ISLAM 


At the hour when the Eastern Church had degenerated 
into a rigid ecclesiasticism with an elaborate ritual, devoted 
to the cause of Empire, and when multitudes of Christians 
were seeking redemption and salvation by penance and self- 


1 Gibbon, Vol. 3, p. 304. 2Jbid., Vol. 5, p. 30. 8 Tbid., Vol hE 
4 Adeney, Doka5e 5 Ibid., p. 157. 6 Gibbon, Void High Bi 


RELIGION IN THE NEAR EAST 41 


mutilation in solitary places, there was born in the city of 
Mecca in Arabia a child who was destined to change the 
whole history of the Near East. 

Mohammed was born in 570. He was a child of pov- 
erty, although it seems that his grandfather was a man of 
some means. At the age of twenty-five, he married a rich 
widow, who proved to be a devoted wife and wise coun- 
selor. When he was forty he had a remarkable religious 
experience which utterly changed his whole life. He soon 
gathered a few followers about him and in 622 was com- 
pelled to flee from Mecca. He gained recruits in Medina 
and was able to repulse his former townsmen. After a 
controversy with a Jewish colony near at hand he fell upon 
them, slaying nine hundred men and enslaving the women 
and children. “Thereafter,” says H. G. Wells, “his power 
extended, there were battles, treacheries, massacres; but on 
the whole he prevailed, until he was master of all Arabia; 
and when he was master of all Arabia in 632, at the age 
of sixty-two, he died.”? During his lifetime he fought in 
person in nine battles or sieges and fifty enterprises of war 
were achieved in ten years by himself and his lieutenants.? 

Mohammed had most of the virtues and defects of the 
people of his day. He was a man of great imaginative 
power, with passionate devotion to his religion and with 
unbounded courage. One of his distinguished followers 
has recently referred to him as “the grandest of figures upon 
whom the light of history has ever shone.” * On the other 
hand, as Mr. Wells points out, “he was diplomatic, treach- 
erous, ruthless, or compromising as the occasion required and 
as any other Arab king might have been in his place; and 
there was singularly little spirituality in his kingship.” # 
After the death of his first wife when he was fifty he mar- 
ried several other wives and kept a number of concubines. 
He married Ayesha when she was only nine years of age. 
At the end of a battle with some Jews he looked over the 
captive women and selected one Safiyya, whose husband 
having been captured was then executed. “Because he, 
too, founded a great religion, there are those who write of 
this evidently lustful and rather shifty leader as though he 
were a man to put beside Jesus of Nazareth or Gautama or 
Mani. But it is surely manifest that he was a being of a 


1 The Outline of History, p. 324 (English one-volume edition). 
2 Gibbon, Vol. 5, p. 257. *%Justice Ameer Ali, The Spirit of Islam, p. 51. 
4 Outline of History, p. 324. 


42 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


commoner clay; he was vain, egotistical, tyrannous, and a 
self-deceiver.” + 

What was the nature of the religion which he founded? 
“There is but one God and Mohammed is his Prophet” is 
the heart of Islam. All power is in the hands of Allah 
and the life and future of every man is preordained. A 
distinguished Mohammedan scholar writes in this connec- 
tion: “The Koran proclaims and repeatedly proclaims that 
the Future is fixed and determinate, settled and inevitable; 
that, in fact, the future is duly mapped out and permanently 
engraved on certain tablets in heaven called ‘Preserved 
Tables.’ Mohammed believed in the resurrection and 
final judgment. Heaven is pictured in most vivid imagery. 
“Feasting in the most gorgeous and delicious variety, the 
most costly and brilliant garments, odors, and music of the 
most ravishing nature, and above all, the enjoyment of the 
black-eyed daughters of Paradise, are held out as a reward 
to the commonest inhabitant of Paradise, who will always 
remain in the full vigor of youth and manhood.” 

Islam demands five chief duties: confession, prayer, alms- 
giving, fasting and pilgrimage. Five times each day the de- 
vout Mohammedan must turn toward Mecca and prostrate 
himself in prayer. The giving of alms is a legal duty. 
During the month of Ramadan he is commanded to ab- 
stain from food and other indulgences during the day, al- 
though at night he may go to any excess. Once at least in a 
lifetime he must make the pilgrimage to Mecca. 

Islam has a number of prohibitory laws. The drinking of 
wine is rigorously forbidden, as are also all games of chance. 
Usury is strictly forbidden. The revulsion against idolatry 
was so strong that stringent laws were passed relating to 
images and pictures. 

One of the most important phases of Islam is its attitude 
toward women. Islam is distinctly a man’s religion. The 
Koran sanctions the taking of four wives and allows co- 
habitation with any number of concubines. Moreover, di- 
vorce is exceedingly easy. Any man who merely dislikes 
his wife may divorce her by simply saying, “Thou art di- 
vorced,” or “I divorce thee.” The significance and menace 
of this provision has been emphasized by a leading Moham- 
medan writer in these words: ‘‘The sexual freedom, conceded 


1 Tbid., p. 324. 
2A. S. N. Wadia, The Message of Mohammed, p. 49. 
3 The New International Encyclopedia, Vol. 16, p. 80. 


RELIGION IN THE NEAR EAST 43 


and legalized by it, is indeed such as to make Islam in all 
truth ‘the Easy Way.’” + 

Apostasy from Islam and the embracing of another re- 
ligion is supposed to be punished by the death of the of- 
fender. The Koran enjoins believers to make war against 
infidels. And yet the Koran is not consistent on this point, 
for elsewhere it says: “Defend yourself against your ene- 
mies; but attack them not first; God hateth the aggressor.” ” 
In another place it is recorded: “What, wilt thou force men 
to believe when belief can come only from Allah. Let there 
be, therefore, no compulsion in religion.” * And again: “O 
people of the book! Be not ye troubled for the Unbelievers: 
verily, they who believe, and the Jews, and the Sabeites, | 
and the Christians—whosoever of them believeth in God, 
and in the Last Day, and doth what is right, on them shall 
come no fear, neither shall they be put to grief.”* And still 
further: “Be not grieved about the infidels, nor be troubled 
at their devices: but follow thou the Way of thy Lord with 
wisdom and with kindly warning, and dispute with the in- 
fidels in the kindliest manner.” ® 

That Islam represented a marked advance over the idolatry 
of Arabia in the days of Mohammed is recognized by all 
authorities. The Arabs of that day were a hard, tough 
race of men who knew little mercy and little compassion. 
Blood-feuds were common and were handed down from 
generation to generation. In the temple in Mecca there were 
360 idols. Caravans carried on a regular trade in wines, 
strong drink and slave-girls. Gambling was a serious vice. 

Islam has done much to decrease idolatry and supersti- 
tion; it has removed some of the worst abuses of polygamy; 
it has done much to remove racial and class barriers between 
its followers; every Moslem is a brother of every other 
Moslem; it has tended to increase moderation and kindness 
in the treatment of slaves and dumb animals; during long 
periods of its history it has shown greater tolerance toward 
other religions than it has received from Christians or than 
that manifested to each other by the various factions of 
Christendom. “In the general estimate of Mohammedanism 
it should not be forgotten what Islam has done for the 
cause of humanity and more particularly the share it had 
in the development of science and art in Europe. Broadly 
speaking, the Mohammedans may be said to have been the 


DAS. NN. sence The Message of Mohammed, eA 
2 Sura IT. 190. 8 Sura tT. aay. 


4 Sura V. 72, red 5 Sura XVI. 126-128, 


AA IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


teachers of barbarous Europe from the ninth to the thir- 
teenth century.” + Mr. Wells is of the opinion that Islam 
“created a society more free from widespread cruelty and 
social oppression than any society had ever been in the 
world before.” 

The West is much better acquainted with the faults and 
crimes of Mohammedans than with their virtues. When 
compared with a corrupted form of Christianity, Islam at 
its best has much to commend it. But when it is compared 
with the religion of Jesus, its shortcomings are conspicuous 
and notorious. While Allah is the only God, he is not the 
righteous, loving, personal Father revealed by Jesus; the 
founder of Islam had such gross lapses in moral character 
that he cannot safely be taken as an ideal and example; the 
Koran, which is a rigid and unchanging law for Moham- 
medans, legalizes slavery and polygamy, and therefore de- 
grades womanhood and childhood; it appeals to the sensual 
by its sanctions and by its conceptions of heaven; it sanc- 
tions the use of violence in a “holy war” against non- 
Moslems; its fatalistic elements tend to make its followers 
irresponsible and thereby helps to wreck moral character. 


THE CONFLICT BETWEEN ISLAM AND 
CHRISTIANITY 


After the death of Mohammed the armies of Islam 
achieved many notable and spectacular victories. Within 
eleven years they were masters of Persia, Syria and Egypt. 
Within thirty years of the founder’s death they had reached 
the Atlantic. The Straits of Gibraltar were then crossed 
and Spain was entered. Exactly one hundred years after 
the Prophet’s death the victory of Charles Martel at Tours 
saved France and Europe from being overrun with Mos- 
lems. Spain remained in their possession for many cen- 
turies. As late as 1311 there were 200,000 Mohammedans 
in Granada alone, only 500 of whom were of Arab descent. 
Rome was partially sacked in 846 and Southern Italy was 
occupied until the eleventh century. They also advanced 
eastward through Turkestan and in 755 reached China 
proper. Cyprus was captured in 648 and Rhodes in 653. 
Moslem armies swept over Asia Minor, and Constantinople 
was twice besieged, in 668 and 716. In the eleventh and 


1 New International Encyclopedia, Vol. 16, p. 83. 
2 Outline of History, p. 325. 


RELIGION IN THE NEAR EAST AS 


thirteenth centuries the Turks from Central Asia became the 
fighting hosts of Islam. The movement spread northward 
through Russia and Siberia, westward through Asia Minor 
to Constantinople and the Danube, eastward to India and 
the East Indies. Constantinople fell in 1453 and the Turk- 
ish armies rolled over Southeastern Europe. In 1529 and in 
1683 they were at the gates of Vienna. 


THE CRUSADES 


During all these years Moslems and Christians were en- 
gaged in intermittent or constant warfare. The most notable 
series of encounters centered around the recovery of the 
Holy Land. The seven principal Crusades lasted for nearly 
two hundred years, beginning in 1096. In exhorting his fol- 
lowers to take up the sword against the Moslems, Pope Urban 
II, at the Council of Claremont, in November, 1095, said: 
“Tf you must have blood, bathe your hands in the blood of 
the infidels. I speak to you with harshness, because my min- 
istry obliges me to do so: Soldiers of hell, become soldiers 
of the living God.” + 

During the siege of Antioch in 1098 the Crusades were 
subjected to manifold dangers from Saracens and from na- 
ture. Large numbers starved to death. Many more suc- 
cumbed to moral temptations and incredible licentiousness 
prevailed. “Seldom,” says Gibbon, “does the history of pro- 
fane war display such scenes of intemperance and prostitution 
as were exhibited under the walls of Antioch. . . . An arch- 
deacon of royal birth was slain by the Turks as he reposed 
in an orchard, playing at dice with a Syrian concubine.” ? 

When he was troubled with Syrian spies, Bohemond, one 
of the Crusaders’ leaders, “commanded that several Turks, 
whom he held in close confinement, should be executed, and 
then ordering a great fire to be lighted, he had them spitted 
and roasted, as flesh prepared for the supper of himself and 
his troops, and warned other spies they should receive the 
same treatment.” 3 

On July 15, 1099, the Crusaders gained temporary con- 
trol of Jerusalem. They then engaged in one of the most 
atrocious massacres of history. “Neither age nor sex could 
mollify their implacable rage: they indulged themselves three 
days in a promiscuous massacre; and the infection of the 


1jJ. F. gic ta Sp Etec of the Crusades, Vol. I, p. 51. 
2 Gibhon, Vol, 6, 
sj. F. Michaud, History of the Crusades, Vol. 1, p. 137. 


46 iMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


dead bodies produced an epidemic disease. Seventy thousand 
Moslems were put to the sword.” + One of the leaders of the 
Crusade boasted that “in Solomon’s Porch and in his temple 
our men rode in the blood of the Saracens up to the knees 
of their horses.” * After the terrible slaughter ,“at night- 
fall, sobbing for excess of joy, the Crusaders came at last 
to the Church of the Sepulchre, and here put their blood- 
stained hands together in prayer. So, on that day of July, 
the First Crusade came to an end.” 3 | 

As a result of the Great Schism in 1054, the Greek Church 
and the Roman Church were exceedingly hostile toward each 
other. This hostility was revealed again and again during 
the crusades. Upon the elevation of Andronicus in Con- 
stantinople, ‘the Latins were slaughtered in their houses and 
in the streets; their quarter was reduced to ashes; the Clergy 
were burnt in their churches, and the sick in their hospitals; 
and some estimate may be formed of the slain from the clem- 
ency which sold above four thousand Christians in perpetual 
slavery to the Turks. The priests and monks were the loud- 
est and most active in the destruction of the schismatics; 
and they chanted a thanksgiving to the Lord when the head 
of a Roman Cardinal, the pope’s legate, was severed from 
his body, fastened to the tail of a dog, and dragged, with 
savage mockery, through the city.” 4 

In 1204 the tables were turned and the Greeks were the 
victims. The Fourth Crusade was diverted from the attack 
upon the Saracens and turned against Christian Constanti- 
nople. The city was captured, looted and burned. “The 
churches were profaned by the licentiousness and party zeal 
of the Latins. Their tables, on which they gamed and feasted, 
were covered with the pictures of Christ and the saints; 
and they trampled under foot the most venerable objects of 
Christian worship. <A prostitute was seated on the throne 
of the patriarch; and that daughter of Belial, as she is 
styled, sung and danced in the Church to ridicule the hymns 
and processions of the Orientals.” ® 


THE EASTERN ORTHODOX CHURCH IN 
MODERN TIMES 


It should not be forgotten that since the capture of Con- 
stantinople in 1453, the Orthodox Church in the Near East 


1 Gibbon, Vol. 6, p. 84. 4 Gibbon, Vol. 6, pp. 140, 141. 
2 New International Encyclopedia, Vol. 6, p. 315. 5 Ibid., Vol. 6, p. 174. 
® Ernest Barker, The Crusades, p. 23. 


RELIGION IN THE NEAR EAST Ay 


has been under the domination of Turkish masters. Very 
shortly after their conquest, the Turks organized their sub- 
ject-peoples into religious communities or “nations.” By 
“nation” the Turks meant religion. Every non-Moslem was 
assigned to one of these communities. The main groups 
were: The Greek Orthodox Church, the Armenian Church, 
the Jewish Church, and the Latin Catholic Church. The 
Patriarchs were appointed by the Sultan and were given 
civil, as well as ecclesiastical, functions over their people. 
But the Patriarchs were always subservient to the Sultan. 
The head of the Church had full authority over all the 
churches in matters of faith, discipline, rites, marriage laws, 
etc. He levied taxes upon his people for ecclesiastical pur- 
pose and kept a small police force. Each Patriarch had to 
make the Sultan an enormous present in return for his 
appointment. In order to do this he was compelled to sell 
benefices to bishops and priests, “so the taint of Simony, the 
buying and selling of the things of God, has been for cen- 
turies one of the characteristic marks of the Orthodox 
Church.” The Patriarchs soon came to be exceedingly 
wealthy, but they rarely held office for very long. The 
Sultans found it profitable to change them frequently. In 
the seventy-five years from 1625 to 1700 there were fifty 
Greek Patriarchs of Constantinople. At one time there were 
fourteen Patriarchs in fifteen years. Some of them were of 
notoriously degraded character, one at least having been a 
confirmed drunkard, without knowledge of Greek. Unfor- 
tunately, little can be said to the credit of the highest officials 
of the Church during these desolate ages. For several cen- 
turies the Church was dragged through the slime of degrada- 
tion. In 1873 three hundred Greek monks, “armed as brig- 
ands, invaded the Holy Grotto in Bethlehem, wounded the 
Franciscan monks who were praying there, sacked and pil- 
laged the sanctuary.” In 1901 the Turkish police in Jeru- 
salem were compelled to stop a pitched battle which was 
being fought between Greek and Franciscan monks on the 
very threshold of the Holy Sepulchre.? 

The historic relationship between the Sultan and the Greek 
Patriarch of Constantinople, which had existed since 1453, 
was broken off by the Patriarch on March 9, 1919, at the 
time when it looked as if the Turks were permanently de- 
feated. After the victories of Mustapha Kemal the whole 
situation changed. Strenuous efforts were required on the 


1 Pierre Loti, Turkey in Agony, p. 81. 


48 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


part of the Allied statesmen at Lausanne to induce the Turks 
to allow the Greek Patriarch to remain in Constantinople. 
As it is, he has been stripped of all administrative and civil 
powers and now has only ecclesiastical functions. Moreover, 
the compulsory exchange of populations has removed prac- 
tically all Greeks from Turkey, except those in Constan- 
tinople. 

During all the years of captivity, the patriarchs, bishops 
and priests have frequently been leaders in the various politi- 
cal rebellions against the Turks. Large numbers of them 
have met the usual fate of rebels. 

In 1914 a special commission of the Carnegie Foundation 
for International Peace said concerning the Eastern Church: 
“The Church does not systematically teach either morals or 
religion; its bishops and priests are the employes of the State 
and they are the propagandists of nationality. Conversion 
with them means a change from one nationality to another, 
whether accomplished by persuasion or force. Religious 
conviction or faith have nothing to do with it.” 

The Greek Orthodox Church has not only been a leader in 
the political struggle for freedom, it has been divided by 
serious quarrels and factions from within. Prior to the 
World War there were sixteen independent bodies in com- 
munion with the Patriarch of Constantinople, although he 
had no jurisdiction except in his own Patriarchate. “It is 
with no malicious pleasure,” wrote Dr. Fortescue, in 1907, 
“that one has to record the fact that, in spite of their inter- 
communion, the dominant note of these sixteen bodies in our 
time is their extreme quarrelsomeness. The thing is too 
patent to be ignored. It is the cause of nearly all their activity. 
... The first element of Balkan discontent is the mutual 
hatred of Greek and Slav. It is now far more active than 
their old enmity against the Turk. Indeed, both sides are 
always appealing to the Turks against each other. A further 
complication is that Bulgars, Serbs and Roumans hate each 
other only less than they all hate Greeks.” ? 

The Orthodox Church in the Balkan countries that have 
achieved their independence is at last free from the tyrannous 
Turk. The Church in various sections has undoubtedly 
made progress, but it will be a long time before it outgrows 
the effects of the centuries of oppression under the Turks 
and corruption prior to their coming. In many places it is 


1 Report of the International Commission to Inquire Into the Causes and Con- 
duct of the Balkan Wars, pp. 271, 272. 
2 Adrian Fortescue, The Orthodox Eastern Church, pp. 273, 275. 


\ 
RELIGION IN THE NEAR EAST 49 


a dry and lifeless formal organization, with little spiritual 
vitality and exercised pathetically little moral influence in the 
life of the nation. A considerable proportion of its priests 
are uneducated and poorly equipped for leadership. Here 
and there there are to be found individuals, like the Bishop 
Nicholai of Serbia, who are great spiritual leaders with very 
wide influence. As yet the number of such leaders is exceed- 
ingly limited. 


THE ARMENIAN CHURCH 


Prior to the World War, the Armenian Church ranked 
next in size to the Eastern Orthodox Church. It is a very 
ancient church. In fact, Armenia was the first nation officially 
to adopt Christianity. In 491 the Armenian Church, due 
to its rejection of the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon, 
separated from the Orthodox Church and has remained sepa- 
rate until the present time. Its adherents have probably suf- 
fered more intense and persistent persecution than those of 
any other branch of the Christian Church. It has a glorious 
line of saints and martyrs. Throughout their history the 
Armenians have been persecuted in turn by the Orthodox 
Church, the Mongols, the Persians, the Russians and the 
Moslems. For centuries they have been scattered throughout 
many countries. But wherever they have gone, they have 
maintained their religion and language in a wonderful way. 
They are not a warlike people. They were never an artistic 
people, nor have they ever produced anything original in 
literature. They are bankers, and merchants. In spite of 
massacres and persecutions, they have an extraordinary way 
of maintaining prosperity. Partly because of this fact, they 
have never been a popular race, in spite of sympathy shown 
by other peoples because of their continued persecution. ‘“Cer- 
tainly the hatred of them and the readiness Kurds and Turks 
show to massacre them comes from economic rather than 
religious reasons.” 1 The worst Armenian massacres did not 
begin until the latter half of the nineteenth century and were 
primarily political in their origin. The leaders of the Arme- 
nian Church, like the Patriarchs and Bishops of the Ortho- 
dox Church, had civil as well as ecclesiastical functions, and 
were in the forefront of the movement for deliverance from 
the Turks. During the Russian War of 1829 there was a 
marked independence movement among the Armenians. Secret 

1 Ibid., p. 392. 


50 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


societies were formed and plots entered into. These secret 
societies were active at various periods throughout the cen- 
tury. There can be no doubt that the Armenians have them- 
selves at times been guilty of excesses and atrocities, especially 
in connection with the advance of the Russian army. In 
1920 Lord Curzon said in the House of Lords: “It must 
be owned that the Armenians during the last weeks did not 
behave like innocent little lambs, as some people imagine. 
The fact is they have indulged in a series of wild attacks, 
and proved blood-thirsty people.” But the plots and excesses 
of the Armenians were preceded and followed by massacres 
and yet more massacres on the part of the Turks, until only 
a small fraction of the Armenian people are still alive. 


AMERICAN PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN TURKEY 


American Protestant missionary work in the Near East 
is only a hundred years old. The early missionaries came to 
the Near East with the definite expectation of working with 
Moslems and Jews. Three factors caused them to shift their 
emphasis and to devote themselves chiefly to work among 
native Christians. First, it was discovered to be impossible 
to work successfully for the definite conversion of Moslems. 
Intolerance and bigotry were so acute that no Moslem in 
Turkey could become a Christian and live. Second, very 
early it was apparent that until the religion in the Near East 
which was known as Christianity was purified and reformed 
it would continue to be an almost insuperable obstacle to the 
progress of the real religion of Jesus. Third, efforts to arouse 
the native Christians were relatively fruitful. And so during 
the history of Protestant missions in Turkey, comparatively 
little evangelistic work among Moslems has been attempted 
and almost no Moslems have been converted to Christianity.4 
The missionaries have, however, been very successful in their 
efforts with Greek and Armenian Christians. At various 
times they have met with serious opposition from the officials 
of the native churches. In 1846 the Armenian patriarch ex- 
communicated all who were actively supporting the Protestant 
movement. In 1850 the Turkish Government recognized the 
Protestant Armenian Church. This recognition was essential 
since without it the participants would have lost their civil 


: 11Tt should be pointed out that there have been many conversions among Moslems 
in India and elsewhere, but not in Turkey. 


RELIGION IN THE NEAR EAST 51 


rights. The establishment of a separate Protestant Armenian 
Church was a great disappointment to the missionaries, as 
they regarded it as much more effective to work from within 
the ancient Church. 

Perhaps the most notable work accomplished by the Ameri- 
can missionaries has been that achieved through their col- 
leges, notably Robert College, Constantinople College for 
Women, and the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut. Cyrus 
Hamlin opened a school in Constantinople in 1840, which 
developed into Robert College. At the beginning practically 
all students were Armenians. After many years of difficul- 
ties, the present magnificent site overlooking the Bosporus 
was secured and a number of handsome buildings erected. 
Through the years this college has been turning out gradu- 
ates who have become leaders in many countries. During 
the second year of the World War there were students of 
seventeen different races, the larger groups being Greeks, 
Armenians and Turks. At that time there were only 34 
Protestants and 79 Moslems, most of the students being mem- 
bers of the Orthodox and the Gregorian Churches. The 
Bulgarian students who have returned to their native land 
have rendered conspicuous service in all phases of national 
life. In 1913 there were in Turkey “nine colleges with 
about 2,400 students, about 50 boarding and high schools 
with 4,500 students, and 400 common schools with 20,000 
students.” ? 

The very fact that the work of the missionaries has been 
so largely with non-Moslems has placed them in a most deli- 
cate and difficult position during all the years of rebellion and 
war. They have often been accused of aiding the revolu- 
tionaries. The facts do not substantiate this charge. There 
can be no doubt that education itself is a primary cause of 
discontent with tyranny and corruption. But the American 
missionaries have carefully avoided political activities. “Not 
only did they keep entirely aloof from politics, but they also 
avoided all contact with political agents. Political propa- 
ganda was strictly forbidden in the American institutions, and 
these institutions were bitterly criticized and even assailed 
by the various revolutionary leaders for this so-called pro- 
Turk attitude.” ? 

The work of the missionaries has been dealt a very severe 


1 Albert Howe Lyber, Current History Magazine, February 1924, p. 807. 
2 George R. Montgomery, Current History Magazine, Vol. 17, p. 303. 


52 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


blow by the World War and the turmoil which has prevailed 
since the Armistice. Due to repeated massacres, deportations 
and the compulsory exchange of populations, their constitu- 
ency has been reduced enormously. There are now very few 
Greeks and Armenians in Turkey, except those remaining in 
Constantinople. Moreover, the missionaries are very severely 
handicapped in their activities by the attitude of the Nation- 
alist Government, by frequent interferences from petty offi- 
cials and by the general uncertainty which prevails. The abo- 
lition of the Capitulations makes them subject to Turkish 
courts, in which it is not always possible to secure justice. 
Religion cannot now be taught in schools and colleges, 
although religious services are permitted in churches and 
chapels set apart for worship. The number of educational 
institutions has decreased considerably, and the enrollment 
of students is much lower than formerly. Medical missionary 
work has been severely hit by the regulation that no new 
permits to practice medicine in Turkey will be granted to 
foreigners. This means that “only six American missionary 
physicians may now work in Turkey.” 4 

The new medical building of the Women’s College, with 
its splendid equipment, is at present being used for other 
purposes. The morale of the missionaries, however, still 
remains high. With great courage and devotion they are 
continuing their work, in spite of gigantic obstacles, and are 
adjusting themselves to the new conditions which prevail. 


SUMMARY 


We have seen how the Christian Church, after it became 
the official religion of the Roman Empire, degenerated into 
a formal ecclesiasticism, with a corrupt hierarchy, and that 
this in turn gave rise to extreme asceticism. Thus Moham- 
med never came into contact with true followers of Jesus. 
From the very beginning Islam and Christianity have waged 
almost continuous warfare. Since the capture of Constanti- 
nople nearly four centuries ago, the Eastern Church has been 
subject to the Turks and, being assigned various civic func- 
tions, has naturally assumed leadership in the movement for 
freedom in various parts of the Turkish Empire. It has there- 
fore been inextricably bound up with the political struggles 
between the European powers and Turkey. Throughout the 

1 Albert Howe Lyber, Current History Magazine, February, 1924, p. 809. 


RELIGION IN THE NEAR EAST 53 


last century, religion has played an exceedingly important 
role in the nationalism and imperialism of the Near East. 
Having traced the main outlines of European imperialism in 
the Near East and of Balkan and Turkish nationalism, we 
shall now proceed to examine the American aspects of these 
problems, 


CHAPTER 4 


THE TERRITORIAL AND ECONOMIC EXPANSION 
OF THE UNITED STATES 


By the terms of the treaty of peace in 1783, the thirteen 
colonies acquired all the territory south of the Canadian 
border and north of Florida as far west as the Mississippi 
River. In this treaty there was a secret clause which was 
not printed in the text and which was not revealed to the 
French minister. This secret clause related to the boundaries 
of Florida, which at that time belonged to England, and pro- 
vided one boundary line in case England retained it and a dif- 
ferent one if she sold it to Spain. When Spain acquired 
Florida she found out about the secret clause and insisted 
upon the more inclusive boundaries, but “under a virtual 
threat of war” finally yielded. Thus America “scored its 
ee considerable victory when our constitution was six years 
old.” 

In 1803 President Jefferson sent a commission to purchase 
New Orleans and certain territory along the Mississippi from 
the French, who had acquired it from Spain. It was stipu- 
lated that the purchase price should not exceed $2,000,000. 
At that moment Napoleon was afraid England would seize 
the territory and offered to sell the whole tract for $16,000,- 
000. The offer was accepted and thus the territory of the 
United States was vastly increased in size. From the Louisi- 
ana Purchase the following sixteen States have been organ- 
ized: Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Minne- 
sota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Okla- 
homa, South Dakota, and Wyoming. In 1810 an attempt 
was made to secure part of Florida from Spain. America 
“negotiated vainly, threatened war, and finally took forcible 
possession of this Western portion of West Florida. In 
default of other means, or perhaps in preference to other 


1H. H. Powers, America Among the Nations, p. 44. In commenting upon 
Germany’s defence of the invasion of Belgium on grounds of necessity Theodore 
Roosevelt said: “England’s conduct toward Denmark in the Napoleonic wars, and 
the conduct of both England and France toward us during those same wars, admit 
only this species of justification; and with less excuse the same is true of our 
conduct toward Spain in Florida nearly a century ago.” The Outlook, Sept. 23, 
1914.15. A711, 

54 


TERRITORIAL EXPANSION OF UNITED STATES 55 


means, the balance of West Florida was seized in 1813.” 1 
Spain and Britain both protested but to no avail. In their 
efforts to secure East Florida, Jefferson and his associates 
“finally finding that Spain could not or would not maintain 
order, virtually took possession of the territory and then 
forced Spain to cede Florida for $5,000,000, all of which 
was to be paid to American citizens in satisfaction of claims 
again Spain.” ? 

In the third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century 
there was serious trouble between the State of Maine and 
New Brunswick over boundaries, a tract of about 12,000 
square miles being involved. The King of Netherlands was 
chosen as arbiter. The United States Government refused 
to accept his award and “began preparations for war.” In 
the State of Maine “troops were raised and money voted.” 
Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and war was averted 
and a settlement was reached along lines of the original 
award. 

Oregon had been secured from Spain in 1792. At the 
time of the Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific, a 
serious controversy was being waged between Russia and 
England over the territory in the North Pacific. Russia had 
a garrison only a few miles north of San Francisco. The 
United States and Britain combined against Russia and 
forced her to accept “fifty-four forty” as her southern bound- 
ary. Then began a long and exceedingly bitter controversy 
between the United States and Britain. At one time America 
was willing to accept a boundary line at forty-nine but Britain 
would not agree. America countered by saying that Britain 
had no right on the Pacific Coast and insisted upon taking all 
the territory up to the Russian boundary. For more than 
thirty years the controversy continued. In 1844 Polk was 
elected President on a platform of “fifty-four forty or fight.” 
After his election internal affairs—the slavery controversy 
and approaching trouble with Mexico—made it advisable to 
effect a settlement and so in 1846 the boundary was fixed at 
forty-nine. 

In 1836 Texas secured her independence from Mexico 
and in 1845 she was admitted to the Union. In 1846 war 


1H. H. Powers, America Among the Nations, p. 44. In commenting upon 
Germany’s defence of the invasion of Belgium on grounds of necessity Theodore 
Roosevelt said: ‘‘England’s conduct toward Denmark in the Napoleonic wars, and 
the conduct of both England and France toward us during those same wars, admit 
only this species of justification; and with less excuse the same is true of our 
conduct toward Spain in Florida nearly a century ago.’’ The Outlook, Sept. 23, 
1914, p. 171. 2 [bid., pv. 49. 


56 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


broke out between Mexico and the United States. A furious 
controversy has raged over the question of the causes of 
this war. One side believes that the struggle was caused by 
the refusal of Mexico to recognize the independence of Texas 
or to consent to the annexation of Texas to the Union.t The 
other side believes that the United States was the aggressor, 
being desirous of gaining additional territory. The South 
was undoubtedly eager to secure further slave-territory. 
President Polk has been bitterly criticized for failing to 
secure approval from Congress before sending General 
Taylor into disputed territory just across the Rio Grande 
from Matamoros, and thus precipitating the war. 

As the loser in the war, Mexico was compelled to cede to 
the United States all the territory north of the Rio Grande 
and Gila Rivers, including what is now part of Arizona, New 
Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Nevada and 
California. In this case, as in previous cases, the United 
States paid for the land which she had seized by force, and 
Mexico received $15,000,000 besides $3,000,000 to cover 
private claims. 

There has been a vast amount of criticism of the United 
States for the part she played prior to, during and after the 
war. On June 25, 1848, Theodore Parker, the famous 
preacher, in the course of a sermon, said: “The war was 
unjust at its beginning; mean in its motives, a war without 
honorable cause; a war for plunder. ... All the justice 
was on one side—the force, skill, and wealth on the other.” ? 
Abraham Lincoln was among those who vigorously opposed 
the war with Mexico. Speaking in the House to resolutions 
he had introduced calling upon the President for information 
concerning the spot where the war began, he said: “If he 
cannot or will not do this,—if on any pretense or no pretense 
he shall refuse or omit it—then I shall be fully convinced of 
what I more than suspect already—that he is deeply con- 
scious of being in the wrong; that he feels the blood of this 
war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to Heaven against him. 
. . . How like the half-insane mumblings of a fever dream 
is the whole war part of his last message!” In the debate 
at Ottowa, Illinois, on August 21, 1858, Stephen A. Douglas 
said of Lincoln: “Whilst in Congress he distinguished him- 
self by his opposition to the Mexican war, taking the side of 
the common enemy against his own country.” 3 

1 This point of view has been set forth at length in Justin H. Smith, The War 
With Mexico, and Chas. H. Owen, The Justice of the Mexican War. 


2A Sermon of the Mexican War, pp. 36, 37. 
® Quoted in Harper’s Weekly, February 12, 1916, pp. 149, 150. 


TERRITORIAL EXPANSION OF UNITED STATES 57 


General Grant was likewise opposed to the Mexican War. 
“For myself,” he said, “I was bitterly opposed to the meas- 
ure, and to this day regard the war which resulted as one 
of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker 
nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad 
example of European monarchies, in not considering justice 
in their desire to acquire additional territory.” In his His- 
tory of the American People, Woodrow Wilson refers to 
our “inexcusable aggression” in the Mexican War.? Cyrus 
Townsend Brady says the Mexican War was “the spoilation 
of a weaker power by a stronger, and is the one serious blot 
upon our national history. The conduct of the United States 
was wholly indefensible in a large part of the operations.” 3 

During the fourth decade of the last century, the non- 
Indian settlers in Yucatan, a province of Mexico, offered 
the “dominion and sovereignty” of that country to the 
United States. The offer was not accepted, but the Foreign 
Relations Committee of the United States Senate offered a 
bill authorizing the President to take temporary military 
occupation of Yucatan. 

In 1867 Alaska was purchased from Russia for the sum 
of $7,200,000. Secretary Seward also made an effort to pur- 
chase the Danish West Indies. The Senate, however, rejected 
the recommendation of the President. In 1870 Sweden 
offered to sell us the island of St. Bartholomew, but the 
offer was not accepted. During President Grant’s adminis- 
tration an effort was made to admit Santo Domingo as a 
state, but this proposal failed to receive the assent of Con- 
gress. At that time sentiment was strongly opposed to the 
idea of protectorates. 


HAWAII 


Hawaii was the first territory outside the American conti- 
nent to be annexed by the United States. The record of our 
contacts with the Hawaiians is interesting and significant. 
In 1853 the Hawaiian Government asked to be annexed, but 
the request was not granted. Fifteen years later Secretary 
Seward urged annexation but was not successful. In 1871 
the United States Minister to Hawaii again recommended 
annexation. Ten years later Blaine “advised the American 
minister to Hawaii to study closely the agricultural and 
commercial advantages of the island, with a view to deter- 


1 Louis A. Coolidge, Ulysses S. Grant, p. 27. 
2 History of the American People, Woodrow ‘Wilson, Vol. 4, p. 122. 
3’ The Conquest of the Southwest, p. 4. 


58 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


mining their value as a future territorial acquisition of the 
United States.” During this period Britain and France were 
gobbling up numerous islands of the Pacific. American influ- 
ence in the islands was strong, due to the influence of our 
missionaries and traders. In 1875 a treaty was arranged 
whereby the lower grades of Hawaiian sugar were admitted 
to the United States free of duty. In 1884 the United States 
was granted temporary concessions for a naval station at 
Pearl River. 

In 1893 a political revolution took place by which Queen 
Liliyokalani was deposed and a provisional government was 
established. There is no doubt whatever that this revolution 
was engineered by American citizens who regarded the Queen 
a hostile to American interests. Indeed, the American Min- 
ister, John S. Stevens, was directly involved. For many 
months prior to the revolution Stevens had been advocating 
annexation of the country to which he was our official rep- 
resentative. He was constantly in touch with the revolu- 
tionists and they depended upon him for advice. Concerning 
the course of the revolution, Woodrow Wilson says: “Ma- 
rines and pieces of artillery were ordered on shore from a 
United States man-of-war lying in the harbor; under their 
protection a revolutionary provisional government was set 
up which thrust the queen aside.’ * Admiral Skerrett later 
said in this connection: “The American troops were well 
located if designed to promote the movement for the Pro- 
visional Government, and very improperly located if only 
intended to protect American citizens in person and prop- 
erty.”® On February Ist, Stevens, without waiting for 
authorization from Congress, proclaimed a protectorate over 
Hawaii. President Harrison had a treaty of annexation sub- 
mitted to the Senate only two weeks before his term of office 
expired. President Cleveland, however, was vigorously op- 
posed to expansion of our territory and withdrew the treaty. 
His biographer tells us that “in his study of the documents, 
Mr. Cleveland soon became convinced that Stevens had delib- 
erately furthered the revolution in order the sooner to make 
Hawaii American territory.”* He sent a special Commis- 
sioner, Mr. James H. Blount, to investigate conditions on the 
spot. In his report Blount “represented the revolution to be 


1 For official letters in this connection see R. F. Pettigrew, The Course of 
Empire, Chapter V 

2 History of the American People, Vol. 5, p. 242. 

3 Quoted by Robert McElroy, Grover Cleveland, Vol. 2, p. 51, 

Robert McElroy, Grover Cleveland, Vol. 2, p. 55. 


TERRITORIAL EXPANSION OF UNITED STATES 59 


the result of a conspiracy managed by aliens and chiefly by 
Americans, and helped on by the United States minister.” 
Concerning this report the New York Herald said editorially, 
on November 23, 1893: “No one unprejudiced can read Mr. 
Blount’s report without the conviction that it goes into the 
archives of the State Department at Washington as the 
darkest chapter in the diplomatic annals of this country.” 
In his Presidential Message on December 18, 1893, Grover 
Cleveland said: “‘The lawful government of Hawaii was 
overthrown without the drawing of a sword or the firing of 
a shot, by a process every step of which is directly traceable 
to and dependent for its safety upon the agency of the United 
States, acting through its diplomatic and naval representa- 
tives.” The President sent his regret to the Queen for the 
“reprehensible conduct of the American minister.” On Feb- 
ruary 7, 1894, the House passed resolutions 177 to 78, “con- 
demning Mr. Stevens for illegally aiding in overthrowing 
the constitutional government of the Hawaiian islands.” On 
May 31st the Senate by a unanimous vote declared that the 
Hawaiians should maintain their own government. 

The Republicans bitterly resented Blount’s report and the 
action of Cleveland, even going so far as to make an effort 
to impeach Blount. The whole question was a major issue 
in the next Presidential campaign. McKinley was elected 
and almost immediately introduced a new treaty of annexa- 
tion, which failed to receive the necessary two-thirds ma- 
jority. After the outbreak of the Spanish-American war, 
another effort was made to pass the treaty but notwithstand- 
ing the tremendous excitement incident to the war, the neces- 
sary votes were not forthcoming. Then it was decided to 
accomplish the same result by passing a joint resolution. 
After bitter opposition, this resolution was passed on July 6, 
1898. Thus Hawaii was annexed, despite the protests of 
Great Britain and Japan. A month after Dewey’s victory 
at Manila Bay, McKinley remarked to Cortelyou: “We need 
Hawaii just as much and a good deal more than we did 
California. It is Manifest Destiny.’ + 


SAMOA 


The Samoan Islands are located in the South Pacific. Dur- 
ing the decades prior to 1899 there were continual disturb- 
ances as a result of the struggles of rival candidates for the 

1 Quoted by Robert McElroy, Grover Cleveland, Vol. 2, p. 72. 


60 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


throne. Great Britain, Germany and the United States often 
supported different factions and serious friction was engen- 
dered. On March 15, 1899, British and American warships 
bombarded certain villages which were in possession of the 
faction supported by Germany. Shortly afterward, an agree- 
ment was reached whereby the islands were divided between 
Germany and the United States, Great Britain consenting 
because of value received elsewhere. The chief American 
possessions are Tutuila (54 square miles) and the Manu 
group (26 square miles). American Samoa has a popula- 
tion of about 10,000 persons and is governed by United States 
naval officers. Congress has never provided for annexation 
or administration of the islands. An executive order issued 
by the President of the United States is the only authority for 
their administration.t 


THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR 


During the closing decades of last century conditions in 
Cuba became intolerable. Spanish tyranny became unendur- 
able. Sharp insurrections occurred in 1895. The Spanish 
Governor, Don Caleriano Weyler, countered with acts of 
extreme cruelty and ferocity. In his message of December, 
1896, President Cleveland gave warning of a possible inter- 
vention unless gross abuses were removed and peace restored. 
On February 15, 1898, the United States battleship Maine, 
lying in the harbor of Havana upon a visit of courtesy, was 
sunk with a loss of two officers and 258 men. In 1899 Henry 
Cabot Lodge wrote: “The outside engine of destruction (of 
the Maine) was a governmental submarine mine and had 
been exploded without the authority or knowledge of the 
Spanish Government by men who wore the uniform of 
Spain.” * In 1908 Professor E. J. Benton wrote: “One thing 
is clear, there was no real basis in reason or fact for holding 
official Spain to be the deliberate perpetrator of a crime of 
such magnitude.” ? The effect upon American public opinion 
was stupendous. Sensational newspapers went to extreme 
lengths in demanding war with Spain. The yellow press 
“manipulated the real news, spread unfounded reports, put- 
ting all before their reads with scare headlines.” * At the 
beginning McKinley was strongly opposed to war and ex- 


1See an interesting article on this question by Frank Bohn, Current History 
Magazine, January 1924, p. 651 ff. 
2The War With Spain, p. 31. 3 International Law and Diplomacy, p. 76. 
4James Ford Rhodes, The McKinley and Roosevelt Administration, p. 55. 


TERRITORIAL EXPANSION OF UNITED STATES 61 


erted himself to avert it. He was greatly handicapped by 
the procrastination of the Spanish Government, although it 
was willing to go to almost any length to avoid war. Terrific 
pressure was brought to bear upon McKinley by the war 
party. At this time the Secretary of War, Russell A. Alger, 
said to a Senator: “I want you to advise the President to 
declare war. He is making a great mistake. He is in danger 
of ruining himself and the Republican party by standing in 
the way of the people’s wishes. Congress will declare war 
in spite of him. He'll get run over and the party with him.” ? 
At the very hour when it seemed that Spain would take steps 
leading to the independence of Cuba, McKinley yielded to 
public clamor and war was declared. 

In an address in New York on March 8, 1904, General 
Woodford, who was United States Minister to Spain at 
the time of the negotiations, said: “The Queen Regent of 
Spain and the President of the United States were each 
and both sincerely desirous of peace. The Spanish Govern- 
ment steadily, courteously, but surely receded from position 
to position in the intent of peace until there seemed reason- 
able hopes of peaceful adjustment. Then came occurrences 
which human foresight had not foreseen and could not have 
foreseen. The singular and inexplicable letter from the 
Spanish Minister at Washington to a correspondent at 
Havana; the destruction of the steamship Maine in the 
harbor of Havana, and the suggestion by the Spanish Min- 
ister of Foreign Affairs that the request of the Pope for 
an armistice was at the instance of the American President, 

. I have always believed, and now believe, but that for 
these things President McKinley would have achieved the 
desire of his heart, and would have accomplished the ultimate 
independence of Cuba without war.” 2 

Dr. James Ford Rhodes, an outstanding American his- 
torian, says in this connection: “No one can go through care- 
fully the diplomatic message without thinking that up to 
March 31 McKinley’s conduct of the affair had been fault- 
less... . After this date McKinley feared a rupture in his 
own party, and on account of that fear, had not the nerve 
and power to resist the pressure for war. We may rest 
assured that if Mark Hanna had been President there would 
have been no war with Spain.” ? In 1910, John W. Foster 

1 Quoted by Rhodes, p. 59. 

2 Quoted by 4 Benton, International Law and Diplomacy of the Spanish- 


American War, 
3 Rhodes, pp. éi, 64. 


62 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


said: “In the light of Woodford despatches, we must con- 
clude that had President McKinley displayed the same firm- 
ness as Grant and Cleveland, and continued to ‘keep hold of 
the reins of diplomacy,’ the Spanish War with its long train 
of consequences might never have come upon us.” ? Wood- 
row Wilson speaks of the Spanish American War as “a 
war of impulse.’ ? Professor E. J. Benton says: “Except 
for an uncontrollable desire for war on the part of the United 
States, diplomacy might, within all human probability, have 
accomplished the emancipation of Cuba. . . . In the opinion 
of nearly all writers on international law, the particular form 
of intervention in 1898 was unfortunate, irregular, precipitate 
and unjust to Spain. The same ends—peace in Cuba and 
justice to all people concerned—in themselves good, could . 
have been achieved by peaceful means safer for the wider 
interests of humanity.” 3 

The war lasted less than four months. The American 
military and naval forces were soon masters of Cuba, Porto 
Rico and the strategic centers of the Philippine Islands. By 
the treaty of peace, Spain ceded to the United States Porto 
Rico, Guam and the Philippine Islands, receiving a payment 
of $20,000,000 for the latter. Spain also relinquished all 
sovereignty over Cuba. 


CUBA 


From the very beginning the United States denied any 
intention of retaining control over Cuba. On April 19, 1898, 
Congress passed a resolution which contained these words: 
“The United States hereby disclaims any disposition or 
intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction or control over 
said Island except for pacification thereof and asserts its 
determination, when that is accomplished, to leave the gov- 
ernment and control of the Island to its people.” In spite 
of profound cynicism in European countries, this pledge has 
been kept, except for the important reservations included in 
the Platt Amendment. For a short time the Government of 
Cuba was administered by the United States Army. During 
the occupation a great work of sanitation and elimination of 
disease was accomplished, especially in the elimination of 
yellow fever. Substantial progress was also made in the 
realm of education. A real effort was made to train the 


1 Quoted by Rhodes, p, 64. 
* History of the American People, Vol. 5, p. 275. 
® International Law and Diplomacy of the Spanish-American War, pp. 95, 108. 


TERRITORIAL EXPANSION OF UNITED STATES 63 


people for self-government. On June 16, 1900, municipal 
officers were elected throughout the island. A constitutional 
convention met on November 5 of that year. Elections were 
held in December, 1901, civil government was duly inaugu- 
rated and the United States troops were withdrawn on 
May 20, 1902. 

Prior to withdrawal, future relations between Cuba and 
the United States were defined in the so-called Platt Amend- 
ment, attached as a rider to the Army Appropriation Bill, of 
March 2, 1901. The provisions of this amendment were 
appended to the Cuban Constitution. Article III is the most 
important and has been subjected to severe criticism as a 
violation of our pledge of complete evacuation. In this 
article Cuba consents to the intervention of the United States 
“for the preservation of Cuban independence, the mainte- 
nance of a government adequate for the protection of life, 
property and individual liberty.’ Cuba accepted this article 
under protest. It has frequently been pointed out that since 
the Platt Amendment gives the United States the right to 
intervene whenever the lives or property of her citizens are 
endangered, it is in fact an abridgement of Cuban sovereignty 
and is, therefore, a repudiation of the solemn pledge which 
we made. Furthermore, the United States has retained a 
permanent naval base at Guantanamo. 

On several occasions since 1902, the United States has 
intervened in Cuban affairs. At the request of President 
Palma in 1905, President Roosevelt appointed the Taft- 
Bacon Commission to aid in reconciling serious differences 
between the warring factions in the Island. When President 
Palma resigned, Mr. Taft was appointed Provisional Gov- 
ernor, and acted in this capacity until 1908. In 1912 Secre- 
tary Knox warned the Cuba Government that intervention 
would be necessary if disorders were allowed to develop in 
connection with the approaching election. In the summer a 
revolt broke out and United States marines were landed 
temporarily. In February 1917 Secretary Lansing made an 
appeal to the Cuban people to avoid civil war and warned 
them that the United States would not recognize a govern- 
ment set up by violence. In March marines were again 
landed and order was soon restored. In 1920 a representative 
of the United States, General Crowder, helped in revising 
the electoral laws. He also persuaded both factions to call 
a second election in certain districts where fraud was evident. 
Thus far the United States has not abused the right to inter- 


64 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


vene conferred by the Platt Amendment. The very fact, 
however, that we forced the acceptance of this amendment is 
still deeply resented in Cuba and its perpetuation constitutes 
a potential source of friction. 


PORTO RICO 


From the time of the withdrawal of Spanish troops in 
October, 1898, until May 1, 1900, Porto Rico was under the 
United States military rule. The Foraker Act of 1900 estab- 
lished civil government, the Governor and other members of 
the Executive Council being appointed by the President of 
the United States. Legislative power was divided between 
a House of Delegates, elected by native voters, and the 
Executive Council. There has been much hostility between 
these two bodies and prolonged deadlocks have not been 
infrequent. The Jones Act, which became law on March 2, 
1917, granted American citizenship to the Porto Ricans and 
increased the power of the native branches of government. 
In spite of this fact and in spite of marked improvements in 
government, education and trade, the Porto Ricans are not 
satisfied. A strong independence movement has grown up. 


THE PHILIPPINES 


At the beginning of the Spanish-American War nobody 
dreamed that the Philippine Islands would come into the 
possession of the United States. In his message to Congress 
of December, 1897, President McKinley has said: ‘Forcible 
annexation . . . cannot be thought of; that, by our code of 
morality, would be criminal aggression.” But at the end of 
the war we were in no mood to return them to Spain, to be 
subjected to further tyranny. Furthermore, we were afraid 
to grant them immediate independence, for fear they would 
fall a prey to some imperialistic power. And so an area of 
115,026 square miles, embracing a population of ten million 
people, passed under our control. On the whole our adminis- 
tration has been very creditable. Under our leadership ex- 
traordinary strides have been made in the establishment of 
law and order, education, sanitation, transportation and 
commerce. 

Our policy has always had in mind the ultimate termina- 

1For_a_ brilliantly written plea for independence by a distinguished Porto 


Rican, Pedro Capo Rodriguez, see Mexico and the Caribbean, edited by George H. 
Blakeslee, Chapter 23. 


TERRITORIAL EXPANSION OF UNITED STATES 65 


tion of American control. Various prominent officials of 
the American Government have made declarations in which 
hope was held out of independence in the not distant future. 
Concerning the Philippines, President Wilson, in October, 
1913, said: “Every step we take will be taken with a view 
to the ultimate independence of the Islands, and as a prep- 
aration for that independence.” In 1915 Theodore Roose- 
velt wrote: “The Islands should at an early moment be 
given their independence without any guarantee whatever 
by us and without our retaining any foothold in them.” In 
1916 Congress passed the Jones Act, the preamble of which 
declared: “It was never the intention of the people of the 
United States in the incipiency of the War with Spain to 
make it a war of conquest or for territorial aggrandizement” 
and that “it is, as it has always been, the purpose of the 
people of the United States to withdraw their sovereignty 
over the Philippine Islands and to recognize their indepen- 
dence as soon as a stable government can be established.” 
In June, 1922, President Harding said: “Whether wisely 
or not, our disavowal of permanent retention was made in 
the very beginning, and a reversal of that attitude will come, 
if ever, only at your request.” 

In 1919, after six years spent as Governor-General of 
the Philippines, F. B. Harrison said: “I wish to state upon 
my responsibility as Governor-General that in my opinion 
there exists today in the Philippine Islands a stable Govern- 
ment, which I think should answer the requirements laid 
down.” In his message to Congress on December 7, 1920, 
President Wilson said concerning the establishment of stable 
government in the Philippines: “I respectfully submit that 
this condition precedent having been fulfilled, it is now our 
liberty and our duty to keep our promise to the people of 
those Islands by granting them the independence which they 
so honourably covet.” | 

In spite of these repeated statements and in spite of con- 
tinuous demands from Filipino leaders, independence has 
not been granted and now seems to be farther removed than 
it did a decade ago. American business interests in the 
Islands are exerting very strong influence against the inde- 
pendence movement. The argument is frequently advanced 
that the Filipinos are not qualified for self-government and 
that we should retain control in order to keep the Islands 
from falling into the hands of Japan. In 1921 the Wood- 


66 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


Forbes Commission appointed by President Harding advised 
against immediate independence for fear of “leaving the 
Islands a prey to any powerful nation coveting their rich 
soil and potential commercial advantages.” This change of 
policy has been very deeply resented by the Filipino leaders 
and has been severely critized by outstanding Americans as 
well. There are those who say that “rich soil and potential 
commercial advantages” are behind our reluctance to relin- 
quish control. General Wood has recently defined a stable 
government as “one under which capital seeks investments 
at normal rates of interest.” } 

Numerous articles are now appearing in American peri- 
odicals advocating the retention of the Philippines. Some 
of these speak with great frankness, for example: “There, 
as with Cuba, there is the commercial factor . . . Standing 
at the threshold of Asia, should not the Philippines become 
as valuable a commercial outpost for America as Hong Kong 
is for Great Britain? May not these considerations prove 
sufficient to keep the Stars and Stripes floating above the 
archipelago under conditions whereby the immense resources 
of the islands, both for their own sake and ours, will be 
developed in ways to make them of the fullest service to the 
world that has need of them?” * 

Professor Buell has recently written: “In the face of the 
promises made by the United States to the Philippine people 
and in the face of the wishes of these people, there is only 
one important reason why so many Americans are now de- 
manding that we cling to these islands: that is, in order to 
advance the interests of a limited number of American 
business men. The American people as a whole have derived 
no material advantage from our occupation of these islands. 
The Philippines have not contributed a cent to the treasury of 
the United States. We have sunk at least $700,000,000 in 
military and naval expenditures arising out of the occu- 
pation.” 8 


GUAM 


Guam is an island in the Pacific, about thirty miles long, 
six miles broad, and has a population of about ten thousand 
persons. At the conclusion of the Spanish-American War 

1 Quoted by Raymond Leslie Buell in an excellent article, ‘““What About the 
Philippines,” in the Atlantic Monthly, March, 1924, p. 400 


2 Sylvester Baxter, Review of Reviews, August, 1923, 'p. 176. 
® Atlantic Monthly, March, 1924, p. 401 


TERRITORIAL EXPANSION OF UNITED STATES 67 


it was ceded to the United States. It is valuable chiefly as 
a naval base and a coaling station. 


THE CANAL ZONE 


In 1881 a French company started excavations on a pro- 
posed canal across the Isthmus of Panama. At the end of 
eight years, the project having already lost nearly four times 
as much as estimated and being only one-third completed, 
the company went into bankruptcy. In 1901 the French 
holdings were offered to the United States Government for 
$109,141,500. When it seemed that the Nicaragua route 
might be selected this offer was reduced to $40,000,000. On 
January 22, 1903, a treaty with the United States was signed 
by the representative of Colombia—since Panama was a 
province of Colombia—whereby permission was given the 
French company to transfer its concessions and properties 
to the United States, and for a consideration of $10,000,000 
and certain annuities the United States was granted the 
exclusive right to construct and operate the canal. The 
transaction was completed, except for the ratification of the 
treaty by the Colombian senate. When the treaty came up 
for ratification before that body it was unanimously rejected, 
for which action various unworthy motives have been as- 
cribed. Feeling in the United States ran high and the refusal 
to ratify was regarded as an attempted hold-up for more 
money. 

Matters were brought to a crisis by a rebellion in Panama 
on November 3rd against the authority of Colombia. The 
part played by American troops in this revolution has been 
subjected to grave criticism. On the day the revolution 
started, United States marines were landed from the Nash- 
ville. When the Colombian Commander, Colonel Torres, 
attempted to transport Colombian troops to Panama by 
railway for the purpose of crushing the rebellion, he was 
prevented from so doing by the American forces, “on the 
ground that the act would precipitate civil war and disturb 
the free transit that the United States was pledged to pro- 
tect.” This action enabled the revolutionists to gain com- 
plete control in Panama and to form a provincial government. 
Two days later this government was recognized by the 
United States—a record for speedy recognition. Fourteen 
days later a treaty was signed, by the terms of which the 


68 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


United States promised to maintain the independence of the 
Republic of Panama. In return for $10,000,000 and an 
annual subsidy of $250,000, the United States was granted 
the control of a zone of land ten miles wide extending across 
the isthmus from Colon to Panama. 

Concerning this transaction an Atlantic Monthly article 
says: ‘“‘This decisive result was, of course, due to coercion 
by the United States upon Colombia—no less so, though less 
directly, than if war had been declared upon that state. . It 
is a fact not to be denied or glossed over, but to be openly 
commended.” ? Professor Clarence H. Haring, of Harvard 
University, says in this connection: “The intervention of 
the United States was a clear violation of Colombian sov- 
ereignty and roused strong resentment in all parts of Latin 
America.” ? 

In his Autobiography, Theodore Roosevelt says that if 
there had been no revolution in Panama he was “prepared 
to recommend to Congress that we should at once occupy 
the Isthmus anyhow, and proceed to dig the canal; and I had 
drawn out a draft of my message to this effect.”’? Speaking 
at Berkeley, California, on March 23, 1911, Mr. Roosevelt 
said: “I am interested in the Panama Canal because I started 
it. If I had followed traditional, conservative methods I 
should have submitted a dignified state paper of probably 
two hundred pages to Congress, and then debate on it would 
be going on yet; but I took the Canal Zone and let Congress 
debate and while the debate goes on the canal does too.” 4 

On December 23rd Colombia protested against the conduct 
of United States officials and suggested that the matter be 
referred to The Hague Tribunal for arbitration. To this 
proposal the United States would not assent. In 1909 Secre- 
tary Root proposed that Panama should pay Colombia $250,- 
000 a year for ten years from cash payments received from 
the United States. Public opinion in Colombia, however, 
was so hostile that proposal was rejected. Unsuccessful 
attempts to reach an agreement were made during the Taft 
Administration. The Thompson-Urrutia Treaty of 1914 
provided that the United States should pay Colombia $25,- 
000,000 as indemnity for injuries due to Panama’s independ- 


1H. M. Chittenden, The Atlantic Monthly, Januar s1a0 10, 0. 
eee Eventful Years, Vol. 2, p. 373. 4 » P. 56, 
© PP. 563} 


‘ aes by Joseph Bucklin Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt and His Time, Vol. 1, 
p. 308. 


TERRITORIAL EXPANSION OF UNITED STATES 69 


ence. This treaty was ratified by the Colombian congress 
but was rejected by the United States Senate.? 

Soon after his inauguration President Harding urged 
Congress to reach a settlement with Colombia. On March 1, 
1922, ratifications of a treaty were exchanged whereby Co- 
lombia received $25,000,000 from the United States. Thus 
was adjusted, in the words of a former United States 
Minister to Colombia, “the only real injustice committed by 
the United States against Latin American people.” ? 


THE VIRGIN ISLANDS 


On January 17, 1917, a treaty between the United States 
and Denmark was ratified whereby the Danish West Indies, 
embracing an area of 132 square miles, with a population of 
about 30,000 persons, were ceded to the United States for 
a payment of $25,000,000. Negotiations for the purchase of 
these islands were inaugurated by President Lincoln and have 
been re-opened at intermittent periods since that time. The 
sale was consummated after a plebiscite in Denmark had 
given a favorable vote. It is significant, however, that there 
was no plebiscite in the islands. The Danish foreign minister 
suggested leaving the question of transfer to a referendum in 
the islands in accordance with the principle of self-determi- 
nation, but “the United States refused to sanction it.” ? The 
people of these islands were transferred from one sover- 
eignty to another without any authorization on their part. 
Upon receipt of the news of the sale a local paper said 
editorially: “The merchandise is now off the counter, the 
undignified unique business being at last closed.’* In an 
exchange of official notes in connection with the sale is an 
extraordinary sentence by Secretary Lansing to the effect 
that “the Government of the United States of America will 
not object to the Danish Government extending their political 
and economic interests to the whole of Greeland.’® Since 

1 Concerning the proposed payment to Colombia, Theodore Roosevelt wrote: “The 
proposed treaty is a crime against the United States. It is an attack upon the 
honor of the United States which if justified would convict the United States of 
infamy. . . . The payment can only be justified upon the ground that this nation 
has played the part of a thief, or of a receiver of stolen goods. . .. There are in 
every great country a few men whose mental or moral make-up is such that they 
always try to smirch their own people, and sometimes go to the length of moral 
treason in the effort to discredit their own national government.’ Theodore 
Roosevelt, Fear God and Take Your Own Part, pp. 339, 340, 324. 

2 Quoted by Graham H. Stuart, Latin America and the United States, p. 90, 

8 Quoted by John Kenneth Turner, Shall It Be Again, p. 344. | 

4 Quoted by Luther K. Zabriskie, The Virgin Islands of the United States of 


America, p. 254. 
SiT bids, Davas Us 


70 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


when has the United States been custodian of Greenland? 
Where did we derive the right to grant permission to another 
country to dominate it? Answers to these questions may 
vary but the fact remains that the Virgin Islands are now 
a possession of the United States. “The naval government 
of the Virgin Islands,” says Arthur Warner, “is tempered 
with a civilian judicial system, and the legislative bodies set 
up by the Danes are still allowed to function, but their powers 
are slight and they are dominated by the Governor.” In 
a recent issue of the New York Times Current History 
Magazine there is an article entitled “Autocracy in the Virgin 
Islands,” The author maintains that the United States Naval 
Government has unduly limited free speech and muzzled the 
press, and has sought to suppress trade unions. “The fran- 
chise is another cause of discontent. Of the 14,901 persons 
in St. Croix only 193 can vote; and of the 8,000 to 10,000 in 
St. Thomas, only 231. . . . The Virgin Islanders, who num- 
ber about 20,000, according to a recent ruling of the State 
Department, cannot vote because they are not citizens and 
cannot become citizens because they are not aliens.” * 


INTERVENTION IN MEXICO 


In addition to the control which the United States has 
acquired over foreign territory, she has frequently inter- 
vened in the Caribbeans and in Central America to restore 
order and to protect the lives and property of her citizens. 
In 1911 Diaz, who had been the autocratic ruler of Mexico 
since 1877, was forced to abdicate in favor of Madero. In 
1913 Madero in turn was overthrown by Huerta and shortly 
afterward was assassinated. Huerta failed to secure recog- 
nition from the United States and was unable to establish 
order. During the short time he was in office more than one 
hundred Americans were killed. In April, 1914, some Amer- 
ican sailors landed at Tampico to purchase gasoline. They 
were arrested but promptly released, with an expression of 
regret, in which Huerta joined. There had been other affronts 
and when Huerta failed to apologize in the form of a salute 
to the United States flag, President Wilson ordered the 
capture of the city of Vera Cruz. The American forces 
remained in that city from April 21st to November 23rd. 
Professor F. A. Ogg, of the University of Wisconsin, says 


1 Forum, August, 1924, p. 181. 
2 Eric D. Walrond, Current History Magazine, October, 1923, p. 122. 


ECONOMIC EXPANSION OF UNITED STATES 71 


in this connection: “A breach was not justified by the facts; 
but, having started on a firm course, the President and his 
advisers felt obliged to follow it out... . The capture of 
Vera Cruz was an act of war. To the peoples of Latin 
America it looked like the beginning of a war of conquest, 
and in Mexico it was fiercely resented.” ? 

The State Department withheld recognition of Mexico 
and brought heavy pressure to bear upon the Mexican gov- 
ernment in the effort to get these laws changed. Conference 
after conference between American financiers and the Mexi- 
can government failed to bring about an agreement. Senator 
Fall and powerful American interests strongly advocated 
armed intervention. Commenting upon the situation which 
prevailed during this period, Professor Thomas says: “The 
contest of the oil men with the government gives us the 
strange, perhaps we should say modern, spectacle of a group 
of private foreign individuals negotiating, sometimes defying, 
a government regarding its internal policy and, backed up 
by their State Department, attempting to dictate what that 
policy shall be.” * In the end Obregon was forced to modify 
his position and recognition was accorded. At the end of 
1923 President Coolidge intervened in Mexican affairs to 
the extent of selling guns and ammunition to the Obregon 
government and forbidding their sale to the de la Huerta 
revolutionaries. 


HAITI 


In July, 1915, American marines were landea on the 
islands of Haiti. For several years conditions had been 
growing steadily worse. Riots and rebellions were con- 
stantly occurring. The Government was heavily indebted to 
French, German and British bondholders. On two occasions 
foreign governments had made collections by force. There 
were rumors that Germany was negotiating another loan to 
be secured by certain port rights and control of customs. At 
the end of July 160 political prisoners were murdered by 
order of the President, who was subsequently cut to pieces 
himself. On August 16th Admiral Caperton was ordered by 
the United States State Department to take charge of the 
customs and to aid in restoring law and order. This was 


1 National Progress, pp. 293, 294. 
*One Hundred Years of the Monroe Doctrine, p. 324. 


72 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


done against the protests of the Haitian Government. United 
States marines have controlled the situation from that day 
to the present time. Martial law was established on Septem- 
ber 3, 1915, and gradually extended to cover the whole 
country. A military censorship was established. The mili- 
tary government continued until May 3, 1916. The Con- 
vention which was ratified on that day provided for a finan- 
cial protectorate over Haiti by the United States. The tele- 
graphs and telephones are under the control of engineers 
appointed by the President of the United States. In March, 
1922, Professor Carl Kelsey wrote: “To summarize, there 
are in Haiti today representing the United States, the fol- 
lowing: 1. The military force. 2. The officers of the Gen- 
darmerie. 3. The Receiver General and assistants. 4. The 
Financial Adviser. 5. Engineers and Medical men, 6. Dip- 
lomatic and Consular officials.”? In March, 1924, a marine 
brigade of 88 officers and 1,334 men was concentrated at 
Port au Prince and Cape Haitien.? | 

There is no doubt that the presence of these America 
representatives has helped greatly in maintaining law and 
order. They have also made a very marked contribution to 
sanitation and health. Moreover, they have been a great 
commercial asset. Trade has increased rapidly. On the 
other hand, there has been an immense amount of protest 
against American intervention and bitter criticism of the 
conduct and practices of American representatives. In 1917 
General Butler revived an old law of 1865 providing for 
compulsory service on local roads, known as the Corvee 
System. “Instead of working near their homes, men were 
being taken, sometimes driven manacled under charge of 
Haitian gendarmes, several days’ journey on foot from their 
homes. . . . Some individuals worked two or three months 
instead of the two weeks theoretically required.”? This 
system was discontinued on October 1, 1918, although the 
law has not been repealed. 

There has been considerable criticism of the conduct of 
the United States marines. In January, 1920, there was an 
attack on Port au Prince by insurrectionists. They were 
repulsed with great loss of life. Brigadier-General Barnett, 
who was in command of the Marines in Haiti from 1914 to 


1The Annals of the American Academy, March, 1922, p. 148. This issue 
of the Annals contains an excellent 90-page summary of conditions in Haiti and 
Santo Domingo. 

2 Current History Magazine, May, 1924, p. 303. 

8 Kelsey, p. 137. 


ECONOMIC EXPANSION OF UNITED STATES 73 


1920, is authority for the statement that a total of 2,250 
Haitians were killed. 1 

There have been, moreover, numerous cases of individual 
misdemeanor and crime. In this connection, Professor Kel- 
sey says that drunkenness was relatively common, that sexual 
assaults were not unknown, that third degree methods have 
been used, that there has been some cases of deliberate strik- 
ing or shooting of natives. “The present Adviser (a repre- 
sentative of the United States) has been absent from Haiti 
continuously for almost a year, drawing his salary and per 
diem expenses of $15.” 

An official of the Department of State in a recent number 
of the Atlantic Monthly, while believing that the occupation 
should be continued because of benefits conferred, neverthe- 
less says: “The American occupation of Haiti is one for 
which there is no strictly legal ground.” *? In 1922 a report 
of a committee of the Foreign Policy Association, signed by 
24 prominent American lawyers, denounced the following 
acts of the American forces: “The seizure and withholding 
of our forces in 1915 of Haitian national funds ... the 
imposition and enforcement of martial law without a declara- 
tion of war . . . the methods employed by the United States, 
namely, the direct use of military, financial, and political 
pressure.”* A report of the Popular Government League, 
signed by a United States Senator and several outstanding 
university professors, declared that a survey of the evidence 
“exhibits Haiti as a promised land of loot for those who 
can smash down the protection given to these people by their 
ancient constitution and independence.”® Among many of 
the Haitian leaders there is intense bitterness against the 
United States for prolonging intervention. They are deter- 
mined to regain their independence at an early date. 


SANTO DOMINGO 


Haiti and Santo Domingo are situated on the same island. 
The Dominican Republic covers the eastern two-thirds of 
the island. Following a series of riots and rebellions, Amer- 
ican troops were landed on May 5, 1916. The Americans 


1U. S. Senate, Haiti and Santo Domingo Select Committee, Hearings, 
Vol. 1, pp. 433, 434. This same volume contains a report by Admiral Mayo 
denying the charge made by Brigadier-General Barnett that “practically indis- 
criminate killing of natives had been going on for some time.” p. 435 

2 Kelsey, p. 147 (1922). 

8 Sumner Welles, The Atlantic Monthly, September, 1924, p. 420. 

4 Quoted by Thomas, p. 266. 5 Quoted by Thomas, p. 267. 


74 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


sought to get the new government to sign a Convention 
similar to the one with Haiti. This the Dominicans refused 
to do. And so on November 29, 1916, there was set up 
“The Military Government of the United States in Santo 
Domingo,” which lasted until July 12, 1924, when the United 
States Marines were withdrawn. For eight years Santo 
Domingo was governed by officers of the United States Navy. 
Tne native Congress no longer functioned. “If new laws 
were needed there was no way to get them except to issue 
executive orders and 589 such had been issued by December 
31, 1920. . . . A more serious matter grows out of the fact 
that five and six years ago at the request of the State Depart- 
ment our marines were sent to the island. During all this 
time Congress has never directly approved or disapproved 
the action.” 1 

In 1921 Dr. Samuel Guy Inman, who has had wide expe- 
rience in Latin America, wrote concerning conditions in 
Santo Domingo: “A military government is not designed 
to develop a people into self-expression or prepare them for 
self-government. In the first place there is too much govy- 
ernment. Martial law always means regulation of every 
detail of life. People cannot meet in public gatherings to 
discuss their problems. The newspapers cannot discuss polit- 
ical questions, and criticisms of the military government are 
not to be thought of.”? On July 12, 1924, the United States 
marines were withdrawn. The Dominican Government was 
obliged to ratify practically all the acts of our military gov- 
ernment. The General Receiver of the Dominican Customs 
is an American citizen appointed by the President of the 
United States. 


NICARAGUA 


By the end of the first decade of this century Nicaragua 
had become notorious for its frequent revolutions. It had 
a record of fifteen presidents during a period of six years. 
In October, 1909, a band of Conservatives started a revolu- 
tion. In November two American soldiers of fortune who 
held commissions with the revolutionaries were captured by 
President Zelaya’s troops and executed. Whereupon Presi- 
dent Taft severed diplomatic relations with the government 
and gave the revolution his open support. This led to the 
downfall of Zelaya and he was succeeded by José Madriz. 


1 Kelsey. vp. 198. £Problems in Pan Americanism, p. 287- 


ECONOMIC EXPANSION OF UNITED STATES 75 


After a severe defeat the revolutionaries retired to Blue- 
fields, where they were protected by American warships. 
The American Commander forbade the government forces 
to attack on the ground that “a bombardment or fighting in 
the streets would destroy the property of Americans and 
other foreigners.” 1 On August 21, 1910, the revolutionaries 
captured Managua and set up a government. On June 6, 
1911, a treaty was signed with the United States, by which 
Nicaragua was promised assistance in securing a loan of 
$15,000,000 from American bankers. This loan was to be 
secured by the customs duties, which, during the life of the 
bonds, were to be collected by an official approved by the 
President of the United States. This treaty failed to receive 
ratification by the United States Senate. At the request of 
the State Department, two American banking houses pur- 
chased Nicaragua treasury bills to the amount of $1,500,000. 
They were to be guaranteed by the customs revenues, which 
were to be administered by a representative of the bankers. 
At later periods additional funds were advanced until $2,- 
153,000 had been invested by American bankers.” As secur- 
ity they received 51 per cent of the stock of the National 
Railway, and 51 per cent of the stock of the National Bank. 
By the terms of the agreement the Republic is debarred from 
reducing the tariffs. 

In 1912 the Conservative government was seriously men- 
aced by Liberal revolutionaries and was able to maintain 
itself only by appealing to the United States for assistance. 
American marines were landed, assumed control of the 
National Railway and bombarded Barranca Fort. Seven 
American marines and bluejackets were killed. Officers of 
the United States dictated the election of a Conservative 
President and have kept a minority party in power ever 
since. “Since 1912,” says Professor Munro, “the Govern- 
ment of Nicaragua has practically been maintained in office 
by the support of the United States.” 

On June 24, 1916, a treaty was ratified between the United 
States and Nicaragua by which it was provided that for the 
sum of $3,000,000 the United States should receive a ninety- 
nine year lease of the Corn Islands in the Caribbeans, a naval 
base upon the Gulf of Fonseca, and the right to construct 
and operate an oceanic canal across Nicaragua. While the 
negotiations for this treaty were in progress, Senator Elihu 


1See D. G. Munro, Five Republics of Central America, p. 230. 
2 Munro, p, 261. SU Dids. Ds 249. 


76 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


Root wrote to a friend: “I confess I am a good deal troubled 
with it. ...I1 have been looking over the report of the 
commanding officer of our marines in Nicaragua and I find 
there the following: ‘The present government is not in 
power by the will of the people.’ . . . And a further state- 
ment that the Liberals, that is to say, the opposition, ‘consti- 
tute three-fourths of the country.’ I am told that if the 
marines were withdrawn the present President would be 
obliged to leave the country or he would be expelled by a 
revolution.”” Senator Root then went on to say that he 
thought the treaty should be submitted to a referendum in 
Nicaragua or that a new government should be elected and 
a new treaty negotiated.t 

Costa Rica and Salvador protested vigorously against this 
agreement as a violation of treaties they had with Nicaragua. 
They took their protests to the Central American Court of 
Justice, which the United States had helped to create. This 
Court handed down decisions declaring that the rights of 
Costa Rica and Salvador had been violated. This action was 
disregarded by Nicaragua and the United States. The re- 
fusal of the United States to abide by the decision of the 
Court proved to be its death blow and it ceased to function 
on March 15, 1918.2 ‘The situation which exists in Nica- 
ragua today,” wrote Professor Munro in 1918, “is inherently 
and fundamentally wrong.” ? On February 7, 1924, Secre- 
tary Hughes declared that the United States Marines would 
be withdrawn, at a date, subsequently decided, not later than 
September, 1925.4 


HONDURAS 


In 1907 the United States and Mexico jointly intervened 
to prevent a general Central American war when President 
Zelaya of Nicaragua sent an army into Honduras to aid a 
revolutionary movement and when Salvador came to the 
assistance of Honduras. Representatives of the various 
republics concerned gathered at the Washington Conference, 
where the Central American Court of Justice was established 
and the perpetual neutrality of Honduras proclaimed. By 
1907 the national debt of Honduras had reached the huge 


1 Quoted by S. G., Inman, Problems in Pan Americanism, pp. 309, 310. 

2 This Court was re-established in a modified form in 1923. 

8 Tbid., p. 264. 

4For a summary of the good results of American intervention see an article 
by He ate C. E, Chapman, American Review of Reviews, October, 1922, 
pp. 7 ae, A 


ECONOMIC EXPANSION OF UNITED STATES 77 


total of $125,000,000. Through the help of American bank- 
ers the bondholders agreed to accept about 15 per cent of 
the face value of the debt. The bankers agreed to make a 
loan of $10,000,000 for the purpose of making this action 
possible on condition that the United States Government 
sign a loan convention with Honduras affording the neces- 
sary security. The agreement signed between the two gov- 
ernments on January 10, 1911, provided that the loan was to 
be secured by control of the Honduras customs, which should 
be administered by a representative approved by the President 
of the United States. The United States Senate failed to 
ratify this convention, as did also the Honduras Congress. 
Later in the year President Taft named Mr. T. C. Dawson 
as special commissioner to help negotiate peace between 
warring factions within Honduras and to select a president. 
In March, 1924, 167 United States marines were temporarily 
landed to protect American lives and property. In April Mr. 
Sumner Welles, special agent of President Coolidge, presided 
over a conference of Honduran leaders which selected a 
Provisional President. 


OTHER LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRIES 


Arrangements have recently been made by American bank- 
ers for a loan of $6,000,000 to the republic of Salvador. 
These bonds are to run for twenty-five years, during which 
time at least 70 per cent of the customs duties are to be paid 
to a representative of the bondholders. During this period 
tariff duties shall not in the aggregate be lowered. The 
United States Government is involved in the transaction in 
three ways: First, in case of a controversy, “the Secretary 
of State” says Mr. Hughes, “has consented to use his good 
offices in referring such disputes to the Chief Justice of the 
Supreme Court of the United States.” Second, in case of 
default, “the Secretary of State consented to assist in the 
selection of a collector of customs.” Third, if such a col- 
lector is appointed he shall send copies of his reports to the 
State Department. The confidential circular sent out to 
prospective purchasers of these bonds said: “The bond- 
holders are entitled to and will unquestionably receive the 
full protection of their own government... . It is simply 
not thinkable that after a Federal judge has decided any 
question or dispute between the bondholders and the Sal- 


78 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


vador government, the United States government should 
not take the necessary steps to sustain such a decision.” * 

Ecuador, Peru and Panama have all employed citizens of 
the United States as Financial Advisers to their respective 
governments. An American financial mission recently aided 
in the reorganization of the fiscal system of Colombta. A 
committee of international bankers, in which American bank- 
ers took a leading part, recently reorganized the national 
debt of Mexico. In Bolivia “the hardest bargain of all has 
been driven, with a loan of $24,000,000 floated, which is 
guaranteed by the country’s customs, by the stock in the 
government bank, by a government railroad, and finally by 
all the internal revenues of the country, which may be aug- 
mented at any time to suit the commission of the American 
bankers—which commission now assumes complete control of 
Bolivia’s finances, including practically the power to dictate 
what Bolivia’s tariffs and taxes shall be.” ? 


FOREIGN INVESTMENTS OF THE UNITED 
Sap 


The Government of the United States is officially involved 
in foreign financial affairs to the extent of some eleven 
billion dollars, this being the amount loaned to European 
countries in connection with the World War. The indebted- 
ness of these countries to the United States is as follows: 


UNITED STATES WAR LOANS 


great (Britain <yaiiiss aced eds mae ee cla hee $4,661,000,000 
PELAUCE id's sca hs dire kites ae ine he piel eo eee aie 3,847,521,000 
DEAL Nia end > ie dis vb ealn sti hens Lie eimai ep ileal SAO 2,015,079,000 
REAIA | hial'as Baidu eyes cat caawarta te rater en ies 236,726,000 
Tog Cena 4) apap aR Re AME A ER Be a 5 190,013,000 
RTPROCE LT. OE ee cae ean eee eee iene 16,500,000 
RGUimiatie + th 7s rey pe shen tte ale hela cae 15,507,000 

$10,982,346,000 


In addition to these amounts $878,664,000 was advanced 
by the United States to the various countries for relief and 
reconstruction, making a grand total of $11,861,010,000.8 

In addition to these government loans, an immense amount 
of American capital has been invested abroad. Whereas the 


1See The Nation, October 31, 1923, p. 479; and October 24, 1923, p. 452. 
2S. G. Inman, Atlantic Monthly, July, 1924, p. 109. 
® Harvey E. Fisk, The Inter-Ally Debts, p. 349. 


ECONOMIC EXPANSION OF UNITED STATES 79 


amount of American foreign investments in 1913 was only 
one billion dollars, in 1924 this amount had risen to eight 
billion dollars... During the single year of 1924 United 
States citizens invested $1,268,438,394 in foreign securities.” 
Foreign capital flotations now comprise approximately 20 per 
cent of our total national investments each year.* On a 
single day recently sixty different kinds of foreign bonds 
were traded in on the New York Stock Exchange. United 
States investments in Latin America are very heavy. The 
amount loaned to governments and municipalities alone ex- 
ceeds $529,000,000 since the war.* Herbert Hoover says 
that the total of American industrial and commercial invest- 
ments in Latin America is “now estimated at considerably 
more than $3,000,000,000 as compared with about $1,000,- 
000,000 in 1912. American capital now plays a dominant 
part in the development of the basic industries in Latin 
America, such as meat packing in the River Plate, petroleum 
in Mexico, Colombia and Peru and sugar and tobacco in 
Cuba. 7.5 

It seems certain that the volume of American foreign 
investments will continue to increase rapidly. The fact that 
about half of the total gold supply of the world is now in the 
United States will undoubtedly increase foreign investment.® 
The plentifulness of American capital has reduced interest 
rates to a very low figure, which fact is another powerful 
incentive to foreign investments. 

Since the Armistice American concessionaire hunters have 
been busy in various parts of the earth. Probably the best 
known of these enterprises was the so-called Chester con- 
cession in Turkey, which conveyed the right of exploitation 
of natural resources valued at ten billion dollars, but which 
has since been cancelled because of default in fulfilling con- 
ditions. The Financial Chronicle recently reported that an 
American firm, W. A. Harriman & Co., had secured a con- 
cession from the Soviet Government for 2,750,000 tons of 
manganese ore from the fields in the Georgian republic. If 


1 Current History Magazine, December, 1924. 

2 Current History Magazine, March, 1925, Section on World Finance. 

8 Literary Digest, December 6, 1924, p. 80. 

4 Financial Chronicle, November 3, 1923. 

5 The Annalist, January 5, 1925, p. 13. 

®“Due largely to our favorable trade balances, recent years have witnessed 
an unparalleled flow of gold toward our shores, the total accumulation here 
having exceeded $4,500,000,000 on August 1 of this year, as compared with 
less than $3,000,000,000 three years ago. Ten years ago (July 1, 1914) the 
total stock of gold coin and bullion in the United States was $1,890,000,000— 
only 40 per cent of the total today—yet this was _ sufficient to support our cur- 
rency and credit structure.’—John E, Barber, Financial Chronicle, November 
29, 1924, p. 2492, 


80 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


the terms of this agreement are completed the Soviet will 
receive about $38,000,000.1 Early in 1924 an announcement 
was made to the effect that the Sinclair Oil Company had 
acquired an important oil concession in Persia. In connection 
with the problem of oil supplies, Herbert Hoover said: “Un- 
less our nationals reinforce and increase their holdings abroad, 
we shall be dependent upon other nations for the supply of 
this vital commodity within a measurable number of years. 
The truth of the matter is that other countries have con- 
served their oil at the expense of our own. We must go 
into foreign fields and in a big way.’* Efforts are now 
being made by American manufacturers to secure access to 
an adequate supply of crude rubber.® There is every indi- 
cation that within the next decades an enormous sum of 
American capital will be invested in foreign lands in the 
effort to control large quantities of essential raw materials. 
Thus it is inevitable that henceforth the United States will 
be involved in the economic and financial affairs of the 
whole world. 


1 Financial Chronicle, October 18, 1924, p. 1802. 
2 Quoted in the New Republic, August 00; 1924, p. 355. 
® See Foreign Affairs, June 15, 1924, pp. 613 ff. 


CuaprTer 5 


WHAT SHALL THE UNITED STATES DO ABOUT 
IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM? 


The extreme danger of European imperialism and national- 
ism to world peace is increasingly recognized in the United 
States. But only a limited number of her citizens yet realize 
that American imperialism and nationalism are regarded with 
serious apprehension in other parts of the world, especially 
in Latin America. At the time the Monroe Doctrine was 
proclaimed in 1823 it was received favorably in most quarters 
in the new hemisphere. In his message President Monroe set 
forth three propositions: First, European nations shall not 
be allowed to acquire further colonies or territories in the 
new world; second, European nations shall not be permitted 
to extend their political systems to any part of the Americas; 
third, the United States shall not interfere with existing colo- 
nies. Interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine so far as it 
relates to the first two phases has not been changed mate- 
rially since its enunciation. There has, however, been a 
steadily increasing tendency to interpret the Monroe Doc- 
trine as imposing the right and duty to intervene in the affairs 
of the nations of Central America and the Caribbean when- 
ever they fail to preserve order or to protect American lives 
and property. Such interventions have been frequent occur- 
rences, as we have already seen. The policy of the United 
States in this regard was clearly stated by President Roose- 
velt in his message to Congress of December, 1904: “Chronic 
wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loos- 
ening of the ties of civilized society, may in America as 
elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized 
nation, and in the Western Hemisphere, the adherence of the 
United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United 
States, however, reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrong- 
doing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police 
power.” In 1895 Secretary Olney said: “The United States 
is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law 

$1 


82 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition.” 1 
When Mr. Taft was a member of the Roosevelt Cabinet in 
1906 he said: “The frontiers of the United States virtually 
extend to Tierra del Fuego.”? In commenting upon the 
remark of President Cleveland, “we are sovereign on this con- 
tinent,” Champ Clark, Speaker of the House of Representa- 
tives, said: “And we are.”’? In 1912 the Senate passed the 
Lodge resolution which declared that “the United States 
could not see without grave concern the possession” of any 
harbor in the American continents “by any corporation or 
association” related to a foreign government. 

Assistance from the United States military and naval 
forces and diplomatic support from the State Department 
have enabled citizens of the United States to gain enormous 
power in the lands to the south of us, as we have already 
noted. That the steady territorial and economic expansion 
of the United States has seriously alarmed other nations 
is evident from the great mass of protests which have arisen 
in many countries. In a large volume written by a noted 
international lawyer of Chile, and published by the Carnegie 
Endowment for International Peace, 360 pages are devoted 
to comments by various distinguished men concerning the 
policy of the United States in Latin America.4 Many of 
these comments are highly favorable to the record of the 
United States. On the other hand, many of them are exceed- 
ingly critical. Professor Carlos Pereyra of Mexico, former 
member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, 
says: “Some recent North American critics of the Monroe 
Doctrine state that it constitutes an anachronism, an antiquity 
now obsolete. I think on the contrary, that the Monroe Doc- 
trine is a living reality; a myth which serves as a cloak to 
the following natural fact ; the ambitions of a powerful people 
who pretend to exercise their hegemony over a group of weak 
peoples, giving to their domination the insincere appear- 
ances of unselfishness and benevolence.” > Marcial Martinez, 
a Chilean writer and diplomat, thinks that “this new policy 
deserves no other name than that of imperialism or hegemony. 
I shall call it from now on Napoleonism.”® A former Presi- 
dent of the Argentine Republic warns against “the new doc- 
trines of intervention which condense the cloud in which the 


1 House Documents, 54th Cong., 1st sess., I, No. 1, pt. 1, p. 558. 
2 Quoted by Hiram Bingham, The Montroe Doctrine, DavOls 

2 Quoted by Alejandro Alvarez, The Monroe Doctrine, p. 386. 
4 Alejandro DEVAL The Monroe Doctrine, 1924, 573 pages. 
SJiid.; p. 312. 6 Ibid., p. 301. 


WHAT SHALL THE UNITED STATES DO? — 83 


rays of imperialism are hidden.” + An eminent Argentine 
lawyer and a grandson of a former president of that country, 
says: “The doctrine is dangerous because it is North Ameri- 
can imperialism hidden under a principle of international 
law.” ? In a book to which Raymond Poincaré wrote an 
introduction, F. Garcia Calderon says: “Everywhere the 
Americans of the north are feared. . . . It excites or sup- 
presses revolutions; it fulfills a high vocation of culture. It 
uses or abuses a privilege which cannot be gainsaid.” ? Pro- 
fessor Charles Sarolea, of the University of Edinburgh, after 
a tour in Brazil, wrote: “They consider the Monroe Doctrine 
as a disguised form of imperialism. They look with sus- 
picion at every move in Panama or Mexico.” * Professor 
Bingham quotes “one of the most conservative writers of 
Latin America” as saying: “The Doctrine of Monroe is the 
shield and buckler of United States aggression; it is a sword 
suspended by a hair over the Latin continent.” ® 

It may be helpful for us to know also how we are regarded 
in certain quarters in Europe. The following quotation is 
taken from an ultra-conservative French Journal: “In Latin 
America the United States is trying to reduce her neighbors 
to economic fiefs, through the agencies of trusts, financial 
control, loans, and political intervention. . . . It makes little 
difference whether Democrats or Republicans are in power in 
Washington. For they do not represent two parties, 
but two plutocracies.... For the American Govern- 
ment now rests upon a monarchy of gold and aristocracy 
of finance. It is the prototype of that quantitative civilization 
that is striving to erect a new form of feudalism in the mod- 
ern world.” ® A British journal recently ran an article on 
“The American Empire,” in which it said concerning our 
occupation of Haiti: “The facts disclosed were of an appall- 
ing character. They made, indeed, a record of frightfulness 
on the part of American marines—burnings and shootings, 
hanging and torture—so hideous that the good American 
public might well be excused for finding it incredible. Even 
today a minority only of Americans have realized that the 
officers of the United States Marine Corps have created for 
America a memory which has not been excelled among the 
records of imperial atrocity in our time.” 4 


1[bid., p. 354. 

2New York Times, October 13, 1920. 

8 Latin America, p. 298. . 

4 Quoted by Thomas, p. 385. 5 The Monroe Doctrine, pp. 72, 73. 

6 Pierre Arthuys, in LaRevue Universelle, January 15, 1923; reprinted in 
the Living Age, March 10, 1923, pp. 571, 576. 

7™The New Statesman, July 1, 1922, p. 351. 


84: IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


In his Atlantic Monthly article, Dr. Inman says: “We are 
piling up hatreds, suspicions, records for exploitation and 
destruction of sovereignty in Latin America, such as have 
never failed in all history to react in war, suffering, and 
defeat of high moral and spiritual ideals. . . . It is impos- 
sible for anyone who has not come into close contact with 
these countries to realize how completely their governments 
are held in the hollow of the hand of the State Department 
at Washington.” } 

After an exhaustive survey of the evidence an American 
professor exclaimed: “O Monroe Doctrine, what mistakes, 
not to say crimes, are committed in thy name!” It is cer- 
tainly high time that American citizens should awaken to the 
seriousness of the situation. The foreign policy of the United 
States is of enormous significance to the peace of the world. 
And yet very few citizens are informed as to what is going 
on in the State Department. Professor Shepherd, of Colum- 
bia University, says in this connection: “Supposedly inde- 
pendent republics have had their independence diminished or 
destroyed, their affairs taken over and their inhabitants and 
property made subject to officials acting under the orders of 
the President of the United States—all without the slightest 
constitutional warrant—and yet who among us seems notice- 
ably to care?” * Professor Powers explains the attitude of 
America by saying: “It would be unwarranted to attribute 
to Americans in this period of national expansion, a definite 
policy of deliberate and unlimited expansion. They have 
had no such: policy, indeed, no consistent and persistent 
policy whatever, and they have consistently and sincerely 
condemned such a policy on the part of others. But they 
have had, like other peoples, what the outside world quite 
naturally construes as such a policy, a permanent instinct of 
self assertion which acts automatically in all situations. They 
don’t want the earth—far from it. But whenever circum- 
stances have directed their attention toward some concrete 
portion of it, it has looked good to them, and they have cast 
about successfully for reasons why they should possess it. 
They have wanted it, and if possible, have taken it, from 
impulse, and then have justified the taking by arguments 
developed later.” 4 

The world is now tragically aware of the catastrophic 

1July, 1924, pp. 107, 110. 

2 David Y. Thomas, One Hundred Years of the Monroe Doctrine, p. 274. 


8 Wm. R. Shepherd, in Mexico and the Caribbean, p. 192, italics mine. 
America Among the Nations, pp. 68, 69 Fi f 


WHAT SHALL THE UNITED STATES DO? _ 85 


consequences of aggressive drifting on the part of European 
peoples during the decades prior to 1914. Bold indeed are 
the outlines of the handwriting on the wall that gives warning 
of a yet more terrible fate for future generations if the citi- 
zens of the United States remain much longer blissfully 
unconscious of the consequences of imperialism backed by 
unrestricted nationalism, blind and deaf to the approaching 
storm of resentment and hatred against American aggression, 
acquiescent and inactive as the danger becomes more immi- 
nent and acute. 


WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE? 


1. The present imterpretation of the Monroe Doctrine 
should be broadened so as to make the various nations of 
the Americas jointly responsible for its enforcement. That 
is to say, the United States should no longer presume to act 
as guardian of the other nations of this hemisphere. If action 
is needed to prevent European countries from aggression, 
such action should come from a group of American nations 
or from an international agency, rather than from a single 
unit. Much of the resentment against the United States 
could be overcome if the Latin American countries were 
regarded as equal partners in the cooperative task of pre- 
serving the territorial or financial integrity of any nation 
that may be menaced. Such an interpretation would also help 
to safeguard Latin America against any possible aggression 
on the part of the United States. Such a precautionary 
measure is absolutely essential to the maintenance of cordial 
relations with the lands to the south of our borders. “The 
very thought,” says Professor Bingham, “that we, proud in 
the consciousness of our own self-righteousness, sit here 
with a smile on our faces and a big stick in our hands, ready 
to chastise any of the American republics that do not behave, 
fairly makes their blood boil.” * It is exceedingly important 
that the United States should give adequate evidence to indi- 
cate that such a policy will not be followed in the future. 
The true policy for the United States was enunciated by 
President Wilson in his message of December 7, 1915, when 
he pointed out that conditions have changed since the days of 
Monroe and said that on the part of the United States there 

1 For a strong defence of the present foreign policy of the United States see a 
pamphlet by Otto H. Kahn, The Myth of American Imperialism, published by 


the Committee of American Business Men, 15 Park Row, New York. 
2 Hiram Bingham, The Monroe Doctrine: an Obsolete Shibboleth, p. 64. 


86 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


was now “no claim of guardianship or thought of wards, 
but, instead, a full and honorable association as of partners 
between ourselves and our neighbors, in the interest of all 
America, north and south... . All the governments of 
America stand, so far as we are concerned, upon a footing of 
genuine equality and unquestioned independence.” 

2. The practice of sending Unsted States military and 
naval forces into another country for the purpose of pro- 
tecting American lives, property and investments should be 
abandoned forthwith. In succeeding paragraphs substitutes 
for such intervention will be discussed. Just here it is impor- 
tant to emphasize the supreme danger of continuing the pres- 
ent practice. If the United States is justified in following 
this procedure then other nations possess a similar right. The 
exercise of this right means the perpetuation of the deadly 
system of imperialism which has already wrought such tre- 
mendous destruction. Consider for a moment what the con- 
tinuance of such a policy would mean for the United States. 
American citizens are now investing their capital in every 
country on the globe and American merchants and conces- 
sionaire-seekers are to be found everywhere. Henceforth 
unstable government and disorders almost anywhere in the 
world will jeopardize American lives and property. Foreign 
trade and foreign investments are sure to increase rapidly 
during the coming decades. It is well known that merchants 
and traders in other lands often take undue risks because of 
confidence in receiving their government’s support. For the 
Government of the United States to assume responsibility 
for safeguarding the property of her citizens throughout 
the world is a huge undertaking and one fraught with 
immense danger to international peace and goodwill. If 
the flag and marines are to follow the dollar then we may 
surely look forward to an era of increased hostility and vio- 
lence. The continuance of such a policy is certain to bring 
us into serious conflict with other nations and will make 
inevitable the perpetuation of imperialism and militarism. 

There are two doctrines in international law which deal 
with this problem. An Argentinian publicist set forth an idea 
which has come to be known as the Calvo Doctrine, the 
substance of which is this: A foreign government is not 
justified in employing armed forces or diplomatic measures 
in enforcing private financial claims based upon contract 
or the result of civil war, insurrection or mob violence. The 
Drago Doctrine, enunciated by a Foreign Minister of the 


WHAT SHALL THE UNITED STATES DO? = 87 


Argentine Republic, has a narrower scope.' It relates to public 
debts to citizens of a foreign country, as follows: The public 
debt should not occasion armed intervention nor even the 
actual occupation of the territory of American nations by a 
European Power. In the famous letter in which this doctrine 
was advocated, Dr. Drago said: “The collection of loans by 
military means implies the occupation of territory so as to 
enforce payment: and the occupation of territory implies 
the suppression or subordination of the local government of 
the territory thus occupied.’”’* This doctrine was strongly 
endorsed by President Roosevelt in his message of Decem- 
ber 5, 1905. In his instructions to the delegates of the United 
States to the Third Pan American Conference, Secretary 
Root said: “It has long been the established policy of the 
United States not to use its armed forces for the collection 
of ordinary contract debts due to its citizens by other gov- 
ernments.” While he was Assistant Secretary of State in 
1907, John W. Foster said in this connection: “We ought 
to protect our citizens against torts, injuries, and injustices 
done them, but when they voluntarily go into a country and 
make contracts, it is not our duty to follow them with the 
army and navy of the United States.’ General Horace 
Porter, a delegate of the United States, was the chief influ- 
ence in securing the adoption of the Porter Proposition by 
the Second Peace Conference at The Hague, the substance 
of which was the agreement “‘not to have recourse to armed 
force for the recovery of contract debts claimed from the 
government of one country by the government of another 
country as being due to its nationals,” except in cases of 
refusal to submit to arbitration or failure to abide by the 
award. It will be noticed that is not a complete acceptance 
of the Drago Doctrine. It is, however, a move in the right 
direction and should be supplemented by further agreements 
incorporating the essentials of the Calvo Doctrine as well. 
In reply to the question, what is the -emedy for the present 
imperialistic practice, Professor Hobson, a distinguished 
English economist, says: “only one—an absolute repudiation 
of the right of British subjects to call upon their Govern- 
ment to protect their persons or property from injuries or 
dangers incurred on their private initiative.” * 


1¥For a full discussion of the Calvo and Drago Doctrines see an article by 
Professor Amos S. Hershey, The American Journal of International Law, 
January 1, 1907, pp. 26-45. 

2Pan American Magazine, July, 1921, p. 89. 

8 American Society of International Law Proceedings, 1907, p. 147. 

4Imperialism, p. 381. 


88 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


A resolution has recently been introduced in the United 
States Senate which would direct all departments of the 
United States Government to refrain from “directly or indi- 
rectly engaging the responsibility of the Government of the 
United States, or otherwise on its behalf, to supervise the 
fulfillment of financial arrangements between citizens of the 
United States and sovereign foreign governments or political 
subdivisions thereof, whether or not recognized de jure or 
de facto by the United States Government, or in any manner 
whatsoever giving official recognition to any arrangement 
which may commit the Government of the United States to 
any form of military intervention in order to compel the 
observance of alleged obligations of sovereign or subordinate 
authority, or of any corporations or individuals, or to deal 
with any such arrangement except to secure the settlement 
of claims of the United States or of United States citizens 
through the ordinary channels of law provided therefor in 
the respective foreign jurisdictions, or through duly author- 
ized and accepted arbitration agencies.” 

In connection with a dispute with the Spanish Government 
due to injuries to Spanish citizens in the New Orleans riots 
in 1851, Daniel Webster, who was Secretary of State at that 
time, said that foreigners are merely “entitled to such pro- 
tection as is afforded to our own citizens” and that Spanish 
subjects “have certainly no cause of complaint, if they 
are protected by the same law and the same administration 
of law as natural born citizens of this country.” + Numerous 
claims have since been made by foreign governments because 
of damages suffered as a result of mob violence in the United 
States. “In the majority of these cases,” says Professor 
Hershey, “the United States Government has refused to 
admit liability in principle, but has granted compensation as 
a matter of grace and favor, or from a sense of magnanimity, 
sympathy, benevolence or policy.” ? If this is sound reason- 
ing why does it not apply also to citizens of the United States 
in other lands? 

3. The United States should enthusiastically cooperate 
wsth other nattons in seeking to create and strengthen effective 
international agencies through whtch disputes may be settled 
without resort to violence. It should be kept constantly in 
mind that as contacts between nations increase and economic 
rivalry becomes more intense the probability of international 
friction is multiplied many fold. All the great nations are 

2 Quoted by Hershey, p. 33. 2Tbid., p. 34. 


WHAT SHALL THE UNITED STATES DO? 89 


becoming more and more industrialized. Industrial nations 
require access to raw materials in other lands, access to for- 
eign markets in which to sell their surplus goods, and access 
to fields beyond their own borders where surplus capital may 
be invested. Just at the time when enormous quantities of 
raw materials are required, the nations find themselves con- 
fronted with a growing scarcity of essential raw products. 
This combination makes inevitable an intensified rivalry be- 
tween nations for control of available supplies. In this 
connection, witness the increased tension between Great 
Britain and the United States over the question of oil. More- 
over, the interdependence of the various parts of the earth is 
becoming more pronounced. 

Nations have long since discovered that they cannot 
safely allow business and commerce within their own borders 
to go unregulated and have created social machinery to regu- 
late “unfair competition” and other abuses. The Sherman 
Anti-Trust Law, the Federal Trade Commission and the 
Interstate Commerce Commission are illustrations in point. 
The monopoly of essential products within a country is now 
universally recognized to be a grave danger to public wel- 
fare. “In the international domain, on the other hand,” says 
Professor Borchard, of Yale University, “unfair competition 
flourishes among the great powers in a fashion that sooner 
or later must lead to conflict. No statutory code declares 
it to be unfair; for the attempt to monopolize the economic 
resources of backward nations by the creation of spheres of 
influence, mandates, protectorates or colonies, the effort to 
control markets, trade routes, cables and coaling stations, 
and by tariff barriers to obtain preferential treatment, dis- 
criminate against competitors or stimulate home industry— 
‘all these are deemed worthy manifestations of state activity 
looking to national strength and prosperity.” + International 
commerce and international finance desperately need regula- 
tion at the present time and appropriate international bodies 
for this purpose should quickly be created. The whole ques- 
tion of the distribution of the raw materials of the earth 
deserves serious and immediate attention by international 
conferences, as does also the extraordinarily vital question 
of tariffs. If further wars are to be averted the nations must 
also devise non-violent means of protecting property and in- 
vestments of aliens within the various countries where stable 
government is lacking. Indeed the whole question of the 

1 Mexico and the Caribbean, edited by Blakeslee, p. 168. 


90 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


relation of the more advanced nations to backward peoples 
should be the subject of continuous discussion in international 
gatherings, until a policy can be outlined which will provide 
adequate safeguards both for the vital interests of the oack- 
ward peoples and for the lives and property of foreigners. 

The essential nature of the modern world makes it impera- 
tive that effective agencies of international justice be created 
without delay. A beginning has already been made in the 
World Court and the League of Nations. The Economic 
Section of the League has had only limited success thus 
far because it has not been allowed to deal with the more 
fundamental economic problems which are threatening the 
peace of the world. But this section is capable of infinite 
expansion and might easily become an exceedingly effective 
agency if the various nations were willing to extend its 
jurisdiction and to enlarge its powers. The Mandates Section 
of the League has made a real beginning in working out an 
advanced policy for dealing with backward peoples. The 
mandates have probably been abused at times but this 
plan represents a marked advance over the old system of 
exploitation. The economic phases of imperialism are so 
complex and so deep rooted that a complete solution of the 
various problems will require years of continuous endeavor 
and much forbearance and patience on the part of all who are 
involved. Cooperative action by the various nations is essen- 
tial to progress in this effort. And that leads to our fourth 
point. 

4. The United States should lead the way in proclaiming a 
new conception of nationalism. The old theory of the abso- 
lute sovereignty of the nation needs to be abandoned. It 
should be supplanted by a new conception of the rights and 
interests of groups of nations as being transcendant above the 
interests of any single nation. That is to say, we need to 
carry one step higher a process which has long been operating. 
There was a time when strong individuals were sovereign. 
They acted as they pleased and acknowledged no law above 
their own desires. There was a long period when cities were 
sovereign. There was a day when states were sovereign. 
The principle of sovereignty makes impossible adequate pro- 
cesses of government between sovereign entities. Absolute 
sovereignty means lawlessness. International anarchy will 
continue so long as each nation proceeds on this basis. Inter- 
national peace depends upon the creation of effective proc- 
esses of justice between nations. The creation of these 


WHAT SHALL THE UNITED STATES DO? 91 


agencies is delayed by the theory of absolute national sov- 
ereignty. The price of peace and justice is the willingness 
of nations voluntarily to surrender that portion of their sov- 
ereignty which stands in the way of creating effective agencies 
of international justice. For a powerful nation like the 
United States to insist upon absolute sovereignty and to play 
a lone hand is to obstruct the path that leads away from 
international anarchy. For if we insist upon being a law 
unto ourselves we make it easier for other nations to do 
likewise. So urgent is the need for a new conception of 
nationalism and a new willingness to abide by decisions of 
international agencies of justice that it would be nothing 
short of a calamity for the world if the United States 
should insist upon going her own way without regard to 
international agencies. Happily there is every reason to be- 
lieve that the United States will not attempt to live in 
“splendid isolation” but will assume her full share of respon- 
sibility in cooperative world undertakings. This process 
should be hastened because of the complexity and urgency 
of the world situation. The imperative need for international 
government and the tremendous power possessed by the 
United States seem to the writer to be conclusive reasons 
why the United States should join the World Court and 
the League of Nations without further delay. 

The foreign policy of the United States in these next dec- 
ades may prove to be the deciding factor in determining 
whether or not militant nationalism, greedy imperialism and 
international anarchy are to lead the nations on to further 
wars, or whether an era of international peace and justice 
shall be ushered in by outlawing war as a crime and by creat- 
ing effective social machinery through which a new concep- 
tion of nationalism may find expression. If America is to 
follow an idealistic and constructive foreign policy a very 
much larger number of her citizens must become informed 
as to the real nature and consequences of imperialism. 
“Why,” says an English authority in this realm, “does Im- 
perialism escape general recognition for the narrow, sordid 
thing it is? Each nation, as it watches from outside the 
Imperialism of its neighbors, is not deceived; the selfish 
interests of political and commercial classes are seen plainly 
paramount in the direction of policy. So every other Euro- 
pean nation recognizes the true outlines of British Im- 
perialism and charges us with hypocrisy in feigning blindness, 


92 IMPERIALISM AND NATIONALISM 


This charge is false; no nation sees its own shortcomings. 
. . . All the purer and more elevated adjuncts of Imperial- 
ism are kept to the fore by religious and philanthropic 
agencies; patriotism appeals to the general lust of power 
within a people by suggestions of nobler uses, adapting the 
forms of self-sacrifice to cover domination and the love of ad- 
venture. . . . It is precisely in this falsification of the real 
import of motives that the gravest vice and the most signal 
peril of Imperialism reside. .. . Imperialism has been floated 
on a sea of vague, shifty, well-sounding phrases which are 
seldom tested by close contact with fact. ... It is the be- 
setting sin of all successful States, and its penaltv is unalter- 
able in the order of nature.” 
Two courses are now open to the United States. She may 
travel the road of aggressive nationalism and greedy imperial- 
ism that leads to hostility and war, or she may proceed in 
the direction of international cooperation through effective 
agencies of justice. National violence and international gov- 
ernment are the alternatives. Upon the choice made by the 
United States in these coming years depends in large measure 
the prospects for permanent peace and justice throughout the 
earth, 
1J. A. Hobson, Imperialism, pp. 207, 209, 390. 





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